Leam Valley Messenger Flecknoe December 2014/January 2015 Rev Jane Close The Vicarage, Lower Street Tel: 01788 899226 Mobile: 07958 685423 Reader: Dr Alec Parker Orchard Cottage Broadwell Tel: 01926 812548 If you wish to contact Rev Jane by e-mail, her address is: revj.close@btinternet.com Perspectives It s funny how our view of time changes at various times of our lives. As December arrives children use words like finally, adults use the word already. Children view four weeks till Christmas as an eternity, adults feel like there isn t enough time to get everything done. Perspective changes everything. Our perspective on the Christmas season will change whether we see it as a time of celebration or as a time of obligation. Someone who sees Christmas as an obligation will focus on the gifts that need to be purchased, the preparations that need to be made, and the schedule that is wearing you out. They grumble a lot during the weeks leading to Christmas. They simply want to survive the holidays. Someone who sees Christmas as a time of celebration uses gift giving to express appreciation and love to people who touch our lives. They look forward to family gatherings and renewing ties. They find themselves trying to take in all the great things that are going on. These people smile, sing, give lots of hugs, read every Christmas card and can t wait to start playing their Christmas music. Which kind of person are you? Are you a Scrooge or a Santa? Are you decking the halls with complaints or holly? We choose the kind of attitude we have. So if you are Mr. or Ms. Grumpy this Christmas, can I ask, Why have you chosen to be this way? This is a time of the year that is filled with opportunity. People are receptive to acts of generosity and love. Please make a decision to enjoy and celebrate Christmas this year. Look for ways to express His love in tangible ways. Participate in our special events. Reach out to family members. Be attentive to the less fortunate.be politically incorrect and wish everyone you see a Merry Christmas. Use this time of the year to reach out to a friend. Use this time to renew your commitment to the One who reached out to you. Enjoy the celebration. But if you don t, you will have no one to blame but yourself. Every Blessing to you this Christmas. Rev Jane. - 1 - Church Services 4.00 pm Messy Church Thursday 4 th December 7 th December Saturday Broadwell 13 th December Wolfhampcote 14 th December Flecknoe 4.00 pm 10.00 am 4.00 pm Christingle Service Messy Church Carol Concert Evensong Tuesday 16 th December 7.00 pm 21 st December L. Hastings - Benefice 10.30 am 24 th December 11.00 pm 11.00 pm 25 th December Flecknoe 10.30 am 28 th December - Benefice 10.30 am 2015 4 th January 11 th January Flecknoe Family Service Evensong W W.com Evensong C of GS Broadwell 7.30 pm Healing Service 18 th January Tuesday 20 th January 25 th January Flecknoe 1 st February Tuesday 3rd February 4.00 pm The Breakfast Service Afternoon Worship Broadwell Chapel 7.30 pm Ecumenical Songs of Praise Thursday 4.00 pm Messy Church 5 th February 8 th February Flecknoe Family Service Evensong - 2 -
From the Registers Baptisms: We welcome into the life and membership of the church: Scarlett Ada Berney on 30 th November at Flecknoe Funerals: Thank You We offer our sympathy and the assurance of our prayers to the relatives and friends of: Peter Berry whose Funeral/burial took place on 10 th November at. Ken Barden whose Funeral took place on 19 th November at. Church News and Notices Many thanks to all the flower ladies who decorated the individual churches for Harvest and the Remembrance Services. They all looked wonderful. Thank you also for the hard work so many put into making the Harvest lunch and suppers, such a wonderful opportunity for fellowship. Remembrance Sunday Services Benefice Christingle Service On Sunday 7 th December, we will be holding a Benefice Christingle Service. We hope you will join us for this joyful and moving Service at St Nicholas Church, at 4.00 pm. Shine a light in the darkness for children this Christmas. Carol Concert Wolfhampcote Make a note in your diaries for the Carol Concert to be held on 13 th December at 4.00 pm at Wolfhampcote. Wrap up warm and bring a candle. W W.com The Benefice service W W.com is held on the third Sunday of the month at St Peter s Church,. Welcome o Worship is a 30 minute service for everyone of all ages to come together and enjoy worship. The next Service is on Sunday 18 th January 2015. Broadwell Soldiers who served in both World Wars were remembered, along with all who lost lives serving this Country, to enable future generations to have freedom. Thank you to all who helped contribute in researching the history of the names read out, and those who decorated the churches, especially the History Club, Sue Thomas, Bert Ogle, Thelma Gee, Glynis Caunter and Janet Clarke. Our intention is to repeat the memorial displays in the next three Remembrance Sunday Services, adding more each year. It was very poignant to read their stories and see some photographs, bringing home the huge sacrifices that were made. Thank you also to those who manned the church in the afternoon for people to wander in to look at the displays and serve refreshments. The sum of 200 was donated to The British Legion. Healing Services The next Healing Service will be held at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 20 th January, in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Broadwell. All welcome. (No Healing service in December). Bible Group Meeting On Wednesday 17 th December and Wednesday 21 st January, the monthly Benefice Bible Group will be meeting at 10.00 am in Vicarage. All welcome. - 3 - - 4 -
Messy Church in the little Church of the Good Shepherd, is on the second Saturday of each month. The next one will be held on Saturday 13 th December from 10.00 am to 11.30 am. Messy Church appeals to 4 11 year olds. Children must be accompanied by an adult. The session will involve a variety of fun, themed craft activities (often messy), and the session will finish with a snack and a drink. There will be a charge of 50p per child. If you would like more information, please contact Rachel Astley on 01926 812994 or Rev Jane 01788 899226. Babytime Coffee morning for Mums and babies happening on two Fridays a month in The Church of the Good Shepherd, Broadwell, The next date is 12 th December, (there will be no meeting on Boxing Day!) Dates next year are 9 th and 23 rd January. Come and meet other mums and babies/toddlers and enjoy the coffee, chat, cake and play. No charge just your company. From 10.30 am 12.00 noon. School Reunion Flecknoe After many months of planning, the Flecknoe School Reunion took place in September. Many thanks to all those who travelled from far and near, some in their 80 s and 90 s, to enjoy a splendid afternoon of reminiscing. Mr Richard Hall, the son of the last serving headmistress recounted some amusing anecdotes of his school experiences. Finally everyone enjoyed a wonderful tea party. Many thanks to everyone's contribution. Big Breakfast. Many thanks to Sara Jolley for organising our 2nd Big Breakfast on Saturday 15th November and to Jane Lee for her hard work as assistant chef. Thanks also to all who helped to make the event a success and to all who came to enjoy the feast. Nearly 70 breakfasts were served and a very good 341.78 was raised in support of St Mark's church. Our is a little earlier this year and will be held on Sunday 14th December at. As usual Christingles will be distributed and wine and mince pies served after the service. Everyone is welcome. We will be carol singing round the village again this year on Monday 22nd December. All who would like to come to swell our choir should come to Hillcrest House at 5.45 pm for mulled wine and a snack before we set out at. - 5 - Pennies from Heaven Thank you to everyone who has been saving their small change. recently collected the sum of 120. Thank you We have A big thank you to everyone who helped with the churchyard clean-up at St Peter s Church on Saturday 11 th October. Your help was very much appreciated and it did make a big difference to the churchyard. Volunteers required Are you interested in flower arranging? If so, would you like to go on the Church Flower Rota? We have three festivals a year, Easter, Harvest and Christmas when 11 windows in the church are decorated. We are short of volunteers and it would be lovely to have some extra help. We would also like extra volunteers for cleaning the church. This duty would be approximately every 2 3 months. The more people we have on our rota, the less everyone has to do it. If you would like to help with either of the above, please contact Dorothy. W.I. Our meeting on Wednesday 10 th December will be held at 7.30 pm in the Village Hall. Our speaker will be Jayne Good who will be giving us a Painting Demonstration. All Welcome. On Wednesday 21 st January, Georgie Hale will be telling us of her experiences of being Shipwrecked in Antartica while on a cruise. The meeting will be at 7.30 pm at the Village Hall. All welcome. St Peter s Tower Tour Would you like to climb ladders to the top of the scaffolding and see what the Stonemasons have been doing? Are you fit, able and aged over 12? If you have answered yes to these questions, and you are not doing anything more exciting, then come along to the church on Sunday 28 th December, weather permitting, at 14.00 and see our new stonework for yourself. We will provide you with a hard hat, a cup of tea/coffee and a cake to calm your nerves. Sensible clothing recommended, i.e. trousers, flat shoes, and warm jacket. - 6 -
We need to know numbers in advance. Please contact Peter Johnson on 01788 814994 to register your interest and leave your name and telephone number. Our next meeting is on Thursday 4 th December, when we will be making Christmas cards and tags, angel tree decorations, animal masks and baking Christmas biscuits. Come and join in the fun, worship and singing, finishing with a two course meal. Please note there will be no meeting in January. Our first Messy Church in 2015 will be on Thursday 5 th February. Farmers Market/Silent Auction Our next Farmers Market will be held on Thursday 4 th December from 10.00 am to 12.30 pm. Apart from our regular stallholders, we will also be selling locally grown Christmas trees and wreaths supplied by Skylark Farm, Staverton. If it is too early for you to buy your tree, you can place your order and collect it when suitable. We will also be holding a Silent Auction and have lots of interesting items for you to place your bids on, some of which will make lovely Christmas presents for the family. Please come along and support the Church and Stallholders. Enjoy a glass of complementary mulled wine (alcoholic and non alcoholic), Don t forget to visit the cafe for refreshments, bacon rolls, hot sausage rolls, homemade cakes, etc. If you would like to donate anything for our raffle table, please contact Dorothy. Please note our first Farmers Market in 2015 will be on Thursday 5 th February. Collection We look forward to the usual service on Christmas Eve, and would ask you to be aware of the fencing and scaffolding round the building, which we are looking forward to seeing coming down mid January. Some extra work has been required on the stonework, so the PCC have decided to retain the proceeds of the collection which usually goes to a local charity, to help towards the extra cost. We believe that the future benefit to all users of, and visitors to the church, from and beyond, justifies this step and hope you can support us in this. Methodist Chapel Methodists invite you to a Christmas Concert on Saturday 13 th December at 7.00 pm in the Village Hall. Kenilworth Consort Singers will be coming along to do readings, poems and Christmas music, and hope everyone will join in. - 7 - There will be a collection for NCH Action for children. Refreshments will be served. We also have our carol service on Sunday 21st December at 6.30 pm in the village hall led by Deacon J Thomas. Services in the Chapel are held at 6.30 pm. Preachers for December and January are as follows: Date Preacher 7 th Dec Mrs Margaret Geldart 14 th Dec Mrs D Margetts 21 st Dec in Village Hall Deacon Janet 28 th Dec Rev A Hardwick 2015 4 th Jan Deacon J Thomas () 11 th Jan Mr J Wright 18 th Jan Lieutenant Colonels B and G Heely 25 th Jan Mr K Hiscock English Heritage Angel award Well done Brian Cooke who project managed the 1.25 million restoration work after the awful 2009 arson attack on All Saints Church, and in August 2013, project managed the repair and restoration of the roof and organ after lead stolen from the church roof caused substantial damage. Brian and his wife Charmian have worked tirelessly, encouraging volunteers and supporting workers after researching for the right organ to go in this beautiful building. After being shortlisted with 16 others for four categories, in an award ceremony at The Palace Theatre, London on Monday 3 rd November, Brian received the English Heritage Angel Award for the best rescue or repair of a historic place of worship. An award that recognises the hard work, effort, skills and commitment individual people are prepared to make. Well done Brian, I know you would want to say that it was also a huge amount of effort by many others but this one is for you. Thank you. - 8 -
Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal 2014 Zinnia Allen would like to say a very big thank you to all the residents of Hill for their very generous donations to the Poppy Appeal this year. The sum of 45.93 was collected. Churchyard Clear-up A big thank you to all those who have generously worked hard transforming the churchyard over the last two months it has made an amazing difference. New 4.00 pm Service With the coming of dark nights we have decided to bring our Evening Worship forward so it is now Afternoon Worship with the opportunity to come early at 3.30 pm and have a welcome cup of tea beforehand. It will take a different format to the old service, as we are hoping to make the service family friendly. Please join us on 25 th January, we would love to meet you. All Saints Christmas Market This was only possible with the hard work of some; baking, cooking, serving wonderful food and hot drinks. Organising and setting up a splendid venue. Thank you to all who contributed the raffle and tombola prizes, and a Christmas cake to guess the weight (quite heavy)! We are holding a children s competition for best Christmas tree decoration. Winners and amount raised will be in February s LVM. PCC wish to thank all who took part at the Christmas indoor market on Saturday 29 th November, especially Karen, Katie, Jane, Liz, all the team, and the stallholders and visitors from near and far. Bonfire Amazingly this bear has just arrived by parachute. He is keeping mum about where he s been and is waiting in Church for his owners? A Big Thank You for the 295 raised for the church at the Bonfire and the donations of fireworks and food. Richard and Elaine, you have great teams and we look forward to next year! It was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Grateful thanks to The New Year s Eve Committee and Charity for donating the fireworks. - 9 - Society We would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a Healthy and Prosperous New Year. Our Christmas event is on Saturday 17 th January at 7.30 pm. Jane Kennaway will be providing musical entertainment and as usual we will have a buffet supper. Tickets are 12.50 from Richard Jackson (891898). Please bring your own drinks and glasses. We expect this to be another excellent evening, get your tickets now!! On the 28 th January we have our first meeting of 2015 at the Village Hall 7.30 pm. Deborah Ellis will be introducing us to Fun Poetry. Everybody is welcome, so do come along!! W.I. Our December meeting is on Thursday 4 th at 7.30 pm at the usual venue (one week earlier than usual). Diana Slocombe will be making something from nothing with a Christmas theme. The competition is for a small gift to be given to a patient at Danetre Hospital to be judged on appearance. Please mark the gift lady or gentleman. Happy Christmas Everyone. Thursday 15 th January 2015 to start the New Year we would love to have some new members. Come along to the Village Hall at 7.30 pm. Nick Channer will be talking about the Mystery of Agatha Christie. The competition is for an old book or bible. Annual subscriptions are due at the January meeting. New Ringers at There had been no ringing team at for many years and at an open day in November 2013, to celebrate the 300 th anniversary of the bells, a notice was posted asking for potential ringers. By the end of the afternoon eight people had decided to become involved and were split into three groups for tuition. Early in 2014 three started at St Andrews, with tied clappers, under the guidance of Christine Homer and John Goddard. Bert Ogle writing for the Guild newsletter writes: our first experiences were quite daunting and backstays were given some stick to the extent that John remarked I hope you have a good supply of straight ash in. We have gradually improved and were integrated into groups at St Andrews and Newbold. Our fellow team members learned at Church Lawford with Janet and Mike Dew and Dunchurch with Mike Bennett and Bruce Caldwell. All of us recognise that there is still a long way to go but we don t crunch the backstay on the slider so often. All of our team have been impressed by the friendliness and helpfulness of all the groups that we have rung with, not to mention their tolerance. We owe a great debt of gratitude to our tutors who have - 10 -
given up a great deal of time to help us. We have now had the opportunity to ring at and it was not as bad as we had expected, all due to the emphasis on good rope control made by our teachers. It is our hope that, at Christmas, we can ring as a group at, still with a lot of help, of course. Well done all eight of you we look forward to hearing you calling us to the services. Christmas 2014 Join us and discover the greatest gift of all time. A warm welcome awaits you at Church this Christmas Leam Valley Christmas Services 7 th December 4.00 pm Christingle Service 13 th December 4.00 pm Wolfhampcote 14 th December Flecknoe Carol/Christingle Service 16 th December 7.00 pm 21 st December 21 st December 6.30 pm Broadwell Methodist 21 st December 6.30 pm Methodist From left: Pat James, Dorothy Ogle, Pat Atkins, Jackie Gibbard, Rev Jane, Bob O Donnell, Bert Ogle, Kim Gibbard and Jean Truslove. Thursday Club On 11 th December, we will be having Christmas Lunch at Barby Sporting Club. Members only. Dact bus will be leaving the Village Hall at 12 noon. 8 th January 2015 will be a social afternoon with games. Date for the Diary - Anglican and Methodist Songs of Praise Service On Tuesday 3rd February 2015 you are invited to a joint 'Songs of Praise' service at 7.30 pm at Broadwell Methodist Church. Come and join us singing some - 11 - Christmas Eve 24 th December 24 th December 11.00 pm 24 th December 11.00 pm Christmas Day 25 th December Flecknoe 25 th December 10.30 am Revd Jane, Brian, Alec, the Churchwardens and members from all the above churches wish you a joyous Christmas and a peaceful New Year. Please note the latest date for items to be included in the next Leam Valley Messenger is 17 th January. Reports should be sent to: dorothyjjohnson@outlook.com or alternatively by post to: Mrs Dorothy Johnson, Dunedin, 2 The Rowans,, CV23 8EP. Tel: 814994-12 -