Since I first contacted you in response to the Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday, as I am sure you are aware, things have moved on and we have reviewed and revised our proposals.

Sunday Service To enable us to follow the Bishop’s advice on small gatherings only and to do all we can to reduce the risk of spreading the virus we are not holding services at St Faith’s and St Wilfrid’s.

We will be celebrating a Eucharist at St Mary’s with a small choir and group of people which we will livestream.

Details of how to share in this are on portseaparish.co.uk - all the links are on the home page.

We hope as many of you as possible will share with us wherever you are– or at least use 10am on Sunday as a time to pray and be with God.

Daily pattern We invite you to pause and pray with us at 9am and 5pm each day. Also at Noon each day we will be celebrating a Eucharist in one of the 3 Churches (Monday, Wednesday and Saturday St Mary’s; Tuesday & Friday St Faith’s; Thursday St Wilfrid’s) – and offering our lives and gifts to God on behalf of all in our community. There will be a short reflection on the Gospel from that service livestreamed around that time. Again please pause and pray with us.

If you want to join us in the Prayers we are saying then the service is available on the National Church of England Website. We will share the online Daily Prayer : https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/join-us-service-daily-prayer or you can download the Daily Prayer app on your mobile phone or tablet.

Open Church St Mary’s continues to be open daily from 9am – 5pm for people to come and be still, find space, pray, light a candle etc.

If you wish to you are welcome to call in – please respect other people by giving them space and follow the current hygiene recommendations (washing hands etc)

Flowers for Mothering Sunday A small group will be making up small bunches of flowers and preparing a message to be given with them.

These will be blessed at the 10am service on Sunday. We then want to have them delivered to the doorstep of all those from our community who we know are ‘isolating’ or ‘distancing.’ You can collect flowers from the Church door from 11am on Sunday to deliver to people you know are isolating.

Revd Sam Her licensing will happen on Sunday at 4pm with the Archdeacon, Ministry Team, her former Incumbent from Petersfield. This will be live streamed . Please join us in praying for Sam and the Ministry team and their shared Ministry at this time.

Pastoral Care There will be a team of us (from the Ministry Team and Admin staff) who will be in the Vestry Hall from 9am – 5pm and this will be our base for a Pastoral Care call centre.

We hope to be in regular contact with everyone by email, social media, and phone calls. If you have any concerns or worries or there are things you need then please do call 023 92 814 444.

We will work alongside HIVE and other community and statutory groups to forward to them requests for support – practical, food, medical, utilities, pet care etc and even financial requests that we cannot meet.

Please again let us know if we can support you in anyway, with prayer requests – or just phone call to say ‘hello’!

Best wishes, Father Bob