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12th November 2023

12th November 2023

By Justin Dyche in Sunday Service on 25 November 2023

Good morning everyone,

It is Remembrance weekend and yesterday I observed silences with children and young people at Rockingham Primary School and Lodge Park Academy. Both schools gave me the opportunity to speak and pray and the silences were well observed, the full two minutes at Lodge Park. We will, of course, be having silences in our services tomorrow, see all the details below. You should also have a look at the mini-SCaNS below which has a Remembrance theme, again more details below.

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY 12th NOVEMBER
As mentioned above it is Remembrance Sunday this week and both St Columba’s and St Leonard’s have a service tomorrow morning so that they can both observe the two minutes silence at 11am. The St Columba’s service is at 10.30am and includes HOLY COMMUNION as well as ENERGIZE groups for children and young people. This service can also be watched on youtube via this link: https://youtube.com/live/RBrirRLmTHc?feature=share
At St Leonard’s there is a FAMILY SERVICE starting at 10.45.

PRAYER MEETING
We have our regular Prayer Meeting in St Columba’s at 6pm on Sunday.

SURVEY OF GIFTS AND TALENTS and STEWARDSHIP REVIEW
Thank you to those people who have already returned their surveys and reviews, but that is less than half the number that were given out. If you have not yet done so please can you try and remember to complete them before Sunday and then bring them with you to church. Once most of the forms have been returned we will be able to start looking at them. If you have lost your copy there will be spares available in church or you can request a copy by replying to this email.

SHOEBOXES
Please remember to return your shoeboxes, either tomorrow or at the latest by next Sunday. St Columba’s will also be open for people to drop off shoeboxes this coming week on Monday 13th, Wednesday 15th and Friday 17th between 9am and 1pm. If you are able to help with any of these, even if only for an hour or two, please email ianpullinger@btinternet.com or sign the list in church. We especially need people to help on Friday morning.

CHRISTMAS FAYRE
Please do remember our CHRISTMAS FAYRE that will be happening on Saturday 25th November from 11am to 1pm. There are several ways in which you can help with this:
sign up to HELP ON THE DAY, either before, during or after the Fayre, or all three if possible – see the sign up sheet in church.
bring a BOTTLE or TEDDY for the tombolas – we especially need more teddies this year (other soft toys are also welcome!)
bring a donation for the RAFFLE
invite friends and family to come along and join in
Thank you to those people who have already donated raffle/tombola prizes and/or signed up to help.

CLIFF at the SAVOY
Not in person sadly but there is a recording of one of Cliff’s Blue Sapphire (65th anniversary) concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo being shown at the Savoy cinema at 7pm on Saturday 25th November. I understand that our former vicar’s wife Judy Eden went to see him live in London this week and says his voice is as good as ever.

SUNDAY 19th NOVEMBER
There will be just the one service next Sunday, MORNING WORSHIP at 10.30am in St Columba’s with ENERGIZE groups for children.

Mini SCaNS
Here is the latest edition of mini-SCaNS. Steve writes: This issue of Mini-SCaNS has a heroic remembrance theme. You can read about two young men who lost their lives in the dreadful mud at Passchendaele in WW1. There’s Robert, who had just become a father—an ordinary lad, not a Chaplain—who before he was killed, was seen by a friend, standing, “in an open field with an open Bible, a group of young men around him, finishing a talk to the young soldiers, and then leading them in singing, ‘Rejoice, the Lord is King. Your Lord and King adore.” And there’s Rochdale lad, William Robinson, 18 (could be an distant relative – my mother was a Robinson from Rochdale/Oldham area), whose body, like so many young men of that war, was never found. See the beautiful hand-stitched Christmas card he had sent his parents.

Take a ‘Trip into the Past’ with a page of amazing pictures from before WW2. You think electric cars are new? See the lady charging hers in 1912; the miner being washed by his wife in a tub in front of the fire in 1931; early roller skates and an electric scooter; and kids having fun!

Discover the more recent story of Francine, for whom “something was missing” in her family’s religion, so she started attending an evangelical church in the Philippines, as a result of which her father beat her every Sunday, until, after she was baptised, she started to bring home food parcels, and he relented. Pray for him. There’s a Word Search about The Titanic, from which so many people were lost; lots of puzzles, some with a music theme and the usual funnies. Hope you enjoy them!”

May God bless us all, and help us to reflect this weekend on the absence of peace in our world today.

Ian

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