Julie's Boggle

Hi everyone

People here are still asking us how we’re settling in but as far as we’re concerned, we *are* settled in. It’s hard to define but I think you do reach a certain level of familiarity with your surroundings and the things you do on a day to day basis, and once you’re there that’s what being settled in is all about.

For us part of settling in was finding a new church to attend and we got that sorted out in the first week. Both of us really liked St Simons, the Anglican church that’s about a 2 minute walk from here, and the congregation have made us very welcome. It’s curious how many churches there are in this area… we were preparing to move around a bit to find one that suited us, but fortunately that wasn’t necessary.

It always interests us how other churches organise their worship – no two are the same I think. At St Simons, they seem to always have three people up at the front with microphones leading the worship, usually one musician and two singers.

These people are on a rota and are never on two weeks in a row. The musician plays either guitar or keyboard, but if he’s playing a guitar then usually he will also makes use of the midi sequencer… this plays the tune for them just as if there were another person there playing a keyboard. Very handy when one has limited musicians! They have a lovely organ and there is one guy who can play it.  This tends to get used for the AMR type hymns which come up more often when there is a eucharist (communion).

We were surprised to find that most English churches only have a eucharist once a month at their main Sunday service… Something to get used to I suppose. Anyway we were quite pleased to find out that at St Simons they have a eucharist every two weeks… And this Sunday we will be sure to stand in the right-hand queue leading to the rail to ensure that we get wine -as opposed to the grape juice that comes if one stands in the left-hand queue!

Just like St Johns, there is also a family service once a month. On these occasions there is a plastic crate filled with tambourines and similar noisy instruments that is placed at the front for the kids (and like-minded adults) and there is lots of opportunity for making a joyful noise during the praise sessions.

There are no prayer books although there are sheets handed out for the eucharist. No hymn books either, it’s all words up on the overhead projector screen in the front. They have a good selection of music generally and we’ve found that we know about half to three-quarters of the songs from what we’ve done at home. The congregation is not as large as St Johns I don’t think (although more people keep returning with the summer holidays ending soon), and interestingly at least a third of the congregation is black. They don’t have many elderly people at all but plenty of children by comparison.

With the congregation being fairly small at the moment (they did a church “planting” recently and sent off a chunk of the congregation to another ailing church) there is no Sunday evening service and only the 10h30 service during the day. Think that’s late? Most main services start at 11 here! We finish between 12 and 12h30, and then there’s time for individual prayer or the chatting in the adjoining hall over coffee and biscuits.

We had our first home group meeting last night. As it turns out, the hosts of this group are the only other South African couple in the church and they live quite nearby. They provide supper for £1 a head and the meeting starts after the meal. No excuses about needing to make supper first! In September there is a big outreach initiative that lots of churches get involved in, it’s called On The Move. As our South African host put it last night, “it’s just like a really big braai“…

Basically the participating churches choose a public park close to them (in our case Shepherds Bush Green) and they set up braais cooking and serving free food to whoever wants it for 4 evenings in a row. A small crew of people are involved with the actual cooking and food preparation and a much larger contingent are present to minister to the people who come for food. I’m not sure exactly how they work the ministry teams but it I gather that they mostly talk to the people, offer prayer for those who want it, and answer a lot of questions about the church and Christianity in general. They will be doing this at 14 other parks around London at the same time so it really should be an interesting outreach to observe and participate in.

Once Tom started work, our new weekly routine developed quickly. Between 8.15 and 8.30am Tom strolls off to his work in Kensington (one of the really lucky ones who can walk to work!) and around 9, I tend to head off on a 10 minute walk to nearby Hammersmith to look for jobs on the internet at a contractor centre that I’ve signed up with. Tom arrives back around 17h30 in the evening and if we need to, we’ll nip out to the Safeway supermarket (about 5 minutes away) before supper to do last-minute shopping. For more major shopping excursions we tend to go to the big Tesco nearby since the prices there are more reasonable…. That’s about 10 minutes walk away and we can go after supper since it’s open till 10pm every night except Sundays. In the evenings we’re at home, we tend to keep busy with the PC’s and the internet (unlimited calls after hours on our contract) or reading -there’s an excellent library nearby.

Some good news that’s come up out of the still-depressed IT job market here, is that I have finally found an agency with a client that’s interested in my CV. Consequently I now have an interview coming up on Tuesday -hurrah! It looks like a fairly decent job so we’ll be praying for that one to work out!

Thanks to all who sent Tom birthday wishes… We weren’t quite up for a splashy supper at a restaurant at UK prices but we did devour most of a tub of Häagen-Dazs toffee ice cream to celebrate the occasion!

It’s been great to hear news of what’s going on at home (although not the news about the rand-pound exchange!!) and we certainly are very grateful for the wonderful blessing of email technology.

Love to all of you and God Bless,
Julie & Tom