Easter came early this year. Lent had started in February, and Easter week came as the last week in March. We were carefully led through the slow and painful build-up to Christ’s crucifixion, and then exultantly to his Resurrection, and we are grateful to our priests and service leaders who guided us so thoughtfully.

Good Friday also included our regular procession of witness up Bredon Hill, in cold, windy but also sunny conditions (though it tipped down after the service). The service at the top was led by people from Worcester diocese, creatively moved into the shelter of the old quarry that is marked by Elephant Rock. Thank you to all the people who assembled in Kemerton for the procession, and particularly to the strong, young contingent from Holy Trinity who did all the heavy lifting.

In this past month we also received the disappointing news that there had only been one applicant for our new priest – worse, just as we were looking at the candidate’s CV, he withdrew his application. So we are back where we were in November 2022, albeit rather wiser. We will be discussing the next steps with the diocese in April, but it seems unlikely we will simply repeat the same advertising – hopefully we can find a more effective way of attracting the priest our two churches need. Meanwhile, our services continue to thrive, thanks to a lot of loyalty and perhaps also to the variety of services we have been creating.

On 29 June Kemerton will be running an Open Gardens event, fund raising for the Victoria Hall. Many of us will be involved individually, and our church will be available if wanted. For our own funds, though, we will be putting on a concert in the church on Saturday 24 August, featuring a number of locally-known musicians. For further details, or to offer help, please contact Victoria Trevelyan.

If you would like to know more about any of these stories, please do contact us on [email protected].