Mattishall

Dear Friends,

Sunday 28th November begins the season of Advent, the season of waiting and watching expectantly and prayerfully.

To aid our prayers  the readings and liturgy for Morning Prayer each day can be found HERE (Advent) and HERE (Christmas and Epiphany). We are continuing to meet on Zoom Mon – Sat 9am  and you are welcome to join us on any day as we come before God to pray for the needs of and seek God’s vision for this benefice.

Also the Bishop has this week launched the Diocesan Vision Transformed by Christ: Prayerful, Pastoral and prophetic

This year the focus will be on Prayer. Do check out the diocesan website for more details of how you can join in.

https://www.dioceseofnorwich.org/churches/mission-hub/ideas/transformed-by-christ-prayerful/

As a busy time approaches I pray that you will all keep safe and well and are able to enjoy the blessing and joy of  time with family and friends as we celebrate the birth  of Saviour .

With every blessing

Andrea

 The Christmas magazine is now available for viewing and/or downloading from the Resources section of this website or directly from HERE. Printed copies are now available for distribution around the benefice. Please do help out in their distribution if you possibly can.

Please note that though the index says that page 28 is about an East Tuddenham festival, it is actually about a North Tuddenham festival (as can be seen by turning to page 28 itself).

I have added a resource which gives details of what is needed when requesting something to be added to this website. Details can be found HERE.

Dear Friends,

All Saints tide is almost upon us.  I always feel a great sense of awe at the thought of all the saints that have gone before us, those faithful people who have worshipped where we worship today those folk who prayed for and served their communities with amazing commitment in good times and in bad.  

In this season, throughout the benefice we will be remembering those who gave their lives for the service of our country and also this year we will be remembering all those who have suffered loss as a result of the pandemic. I expect we will all have different memories of how the pandemic has affected each one of us. Loss may have meant the death of a loved one or it may mean loss of a job or a business or the failure of a relationship. For some the isolation has meant a loss of a social life.

Many within our communities are still struggling with the idea of mixing with others.

Please do hold our communities and our church congregations in your prayers as we find ways of re-connecting while staying safe.

We hope that during the week of the 14^th -21^st November our churches will be open for people to find ‘a space to remember.’

To help us with our prayers, the liturgy and readings for the next month for morning prayer are available from the Resources section of this website or directly from HERE. You are welcome to join us on Zoom each day from 9am  or use the resource on your own or together with others at home.

With every blessing

Andrea   

Drop In restarted Thursday 23rd September in ASM, with about 27 people present.

Do join us if you can. We will be meeting in ASM itself rather than the church rooms as we think the church building is more welcoming. We will continue in ASM for at least the time being each Thursday morning, starting at 10.00 (rather than the previous time of 9.30 a.m.) and continue till 12 noon. Do come along and let us know what you think.

If you have any questions, please do contact Liz Hunton or the church office.

Dear Friends,

 August is almost at an end, I hope that you have managed to enjoy some form of recreation or change of scene.

As the seasons change and harvest is well under way, we turn our minds to a new term.

Our church buildings are open now more frequently and although we are still wearing masks to protect each other and our service pattern may not be quiet the same we can give thanks to God that we have the freedom to worship together, the freedom to talk about our faith and share it with others. We have the freedom to pray for our friends and neighbours.

So many communities around the world do not have this freedom and we pray and give thanks for our brothers and sisters, those who continue to believe and trust even when faced with the threat of persecution and death. 

Prayer and thanksgiving should always be at the heart of all we do.

Each village in our benefice is prayed for week by week in morning prayer via Zoom and daily we acknowledge God who is our creator, sustainer and provider, we bring our requests and prayers, and we rejoice in answered prayer.

As always, we welcome anyone who would like to join us.

Zoom meeting ID:835 13925378 Passcode 858873

The readings are in the Resources section of this website or directly from HERE.

Benefice news

All Saints East Tuddenham

On Saturday 11^th September we will be auditing every house in East Tuddenham and finding out how the residents view the church what they want from the church and how they can help. We will be knocking on doors and delivering these audits in person. Making personal contact will enable the church to be seen in the community. Then on the 18^th Sept we will collect any audits outstanding.

The congregation in East Tuddenham is small and they are asking for help to do this from the rest of the benefice. If you are willing and able to help with this please do let me know.

The idea is to allocate a small number of houses per person. The more people willing to assist the less everyone has to do.

As I have already mentioned prayer is vital so we would also appreciate it if there were people who could meet together in the church building to pray while audits are going out.

Please do be in touch if you are able to support East Tuddenham in this way.

St Michaels’ Hockering

The Morning of the 18^th September St Michaels will be re launching the monthly coffee mornings.

These events are an opportunity to provide a space to bring people together for coffee and a chat to join in with some games and for the church to serve the community.  If there are any bakers out in the benefice who would be willing to bake cakes or savouries on a rota basis please let me know all contributions gratefully received.

Further dates include: 23^rd October and November 27^th

 With every blessing,

Andrea

A major project is getting under way at All Saints, Mattishall, to provide for a new servery, a new toilet, conversion of the tower room into a proper room and a significant amount of extra storage space. Here is a link to the videos used at that service on 11th July 2021.

Please note that these online videos do not have the additional directions (Alan pointing at things with the mouse pointer) which were available on screen when shown live at ASM, but they are still clear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13bhFMObGTw&list=PLGVUwLQtb4TteDq-WdypQhH_pQqc8AU1W

A diagram showing the proposed new layout is downloadable from HERE. Note there is one small error in the diagram, i.e. we do not plan to have a worktop over the radiator in the north-west corner. Apart from that, the diagram is accurate.

15th July 2021 addition: Two (similar) views of how the new servery (not a kitchen!) is intended to look are now available at HERE and HERE.

Audio and video recordings room the final Zoom benefice service from 11th July 2021 are now available from HERE and HERE respectively.

The audio and video recordings from this service, based on 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, are now available from HERE and HERE respectively.

Dear friends,

I hope this email finds you well. In it you will find plans for our worship into the summer. The worship pattern described is a step further forward into worship fully in church buildings.

We had, of course, hoped that by this time, we would be a full week into life after restrictions on our worship. As you will know, that is not the case, and that we are expecting restrictions to be lifted on Monday 19^th July. The staff team have reviewed the plans in the light of the expectation that restrictions are staying until the 19^th July and then be lifted fully. If this changes, we will of course keep things under review.                                          

For Sunday 4^th July and Sunday 11^th July, we will be continuing with Zoom services at 10:00 alongside services in parishes.

On the 11^th there is a united service for both ASM congregations at 10:00am.

On Sunday 18^th July we will be having our annual Benefice Service on Mattishall Village Green service at 10:30am, because we can hold the service despite restrictions.

From Sunday 25^th July we will no longer have Zoom services in order to free up staff team members for services in parishes.

So we plan that the worship for the next three months looks like this:

There may have to be changes if restrictions are not lifted, staff team members become unavailable or we are able to have worship at North Tuddenham once again, but we hope that having these details now will help us all have as much certainty as we can do about worship for the new few months.

With every blessing,

Mark

The audio and video recordings of the Zoom service of 27th June 2021 are now available from HERE and HERE respectively.

The audio and video recordings of the Zoom benefice service on 20th June 2021 are now available HERE and HERE respectively.

The audio and video recordings of the service are no available HERE and HERE respectively.