May Calendar

On a personal note ...

On Sunday, April 24th St Mark's Church, Gillingham was 150 years old and we had a weekend of celebration.

Much work had gone in to decorating the church and producing displays showing some of the highlights of the past 150 years of church life, as well as who we are as a church today in 2016.  There was a constant flow of tea and cake all day.

Saju with our guest for the weekend, Bishop Graham Cray

The weekend was also a great opportunity to catch up with folks I'd not seen for many years.

Keith, myself, Nigel & Teresa Driver and Pauline.
We were all part of the same Bible study group 30 years ago!!

On Saturday 23rd we held a Community Day which almost 400 people came to.  We started the afternoon with a small champagne reception for some local dignatories including our MP Rehman Chishti, one of the local councillors, plus several church leaders and representatives from local schools.
As always, I was sooooooooo grateful for the help of Aiste and Sonali  ...  the epitome of 'Service with a Smile'.

In addition to local dignatories, we also invited those who had been married or baptised at St Mark's, ex-members from all over the country and all those who have had connections with our Pre-School, Toddlers Group, Kidz Klub and SPLAT! 
The church was packed all afternoon.

This is Hilda, aged 102, who was baptised at St Mark's in 1914

Special People Loved And Treasured!

My current minister, Saju Muthalaly, with Thomas Collett-White
who was minister at St Mark's when I first committed
myself to serving Jesus in 1986.

Bishop James Langstaff brought our afternoon to a prayerful close

On Sunday 24th we had a wonderful celebratory service followed by hog roast and salads galore, cake for a crowd and much chatting and catching up.

A huge thank you to Martha for this amazing cake which displays something of our family at St Mark's  ...  our life together is all about people, especially children. The flags show something of the diverse nature of our congregation and the musical notes represent the fact that we are a worshipping community.

All-in-all the weekend was a rip-roaring success and although I played a large part in the planning and organisation of the events there are so00000000 many other people to thank ... too many to name here ... those who produced food of various kinds, those who served and washed up and welcomed and befriended and encouraged, etc, etc.

To Basel and Aiste too, for treating me to pizza on Saturday evening with a film (The Good Shepherd) which took a bit too much brain power.

English Night

Yesterday was Queen Elizabeth II's 

90th birthday.

On occasion I plan events for TABLEtalk but I'm unsure how well they will be received. Such was the case last night for our English Night. We talked a little about heraldry and the meaning of various symbols commonly used on Coats of Arms; then I challenged students to design their own Coat of Arms showing things important to them, whether it was culture or faith related or character traits, etc.
As is often the case I was blown away by both their willingness to engage in the topic and also their creativity.

Many people's designs featured themes of family, friendship and peace. Culture and faith also played a part especially for our Christian and Muslim students.  I really enjoyed listening to each person as they talked about why they had used particular symbols and colours.

Sunday Lunch

"Thank you very much for the Sunday Lunch. The family was really nice  ... Matilda and Alfie are sweet kids; Martha is really kind and it's very easy to make her laugh; Luke has some power-skills at scrabble and Pria the dog was really friendly."
Abdul from Pakistan

International Night

Despite there only being a handful of people at TABLEtalk for our International Night, we had some scrumptious food and were ably entertained by Wayne, Haris and Jon as well as some traditional Cypriot dancing by Areti.