What’s on this week…. Thursday 18th May10am – Morning Prayer Sunday 21st May (Easter 7) 8am - BCP Matins11am - Morning Prayer Monday 22nd May 7pm Zoom coffee and chat Tuesday 23rd May 7pm - Week 5 - Christian Explorer Course - St Michaels Church.Sunday 28th MayAnnual Meeting of Parishioners and Annual Parochial Council Meeting (APCM) – These meetings will take place after our 11am service. Everyone is encouraged to attend, with a cup of coffee and biscuit in hand, to find out more about what we’ve been up to as a church over the last year, and to begin to think about the future. An exciting opportunity to serve St John’s as a Church Warden! Or as a PCC member or Deanery Synod rep… Rev Kathryn says: Elections will be held at the APCM for Parochial Church Council (PCC) members and Deanery Synod representatives. Please have a chat with me if you’d like to serve the church in any of these ways. We also have a vacancy for a church warden this year. Being a churchwarden can be incredibly fulfilling, and filling this role will be really important to enabling St John’s to continue on the journey of growth we’ve embarked on. Healthy, flourishing churches have a team of people leading and participating in church life. The role of churchwarden can be undertaken in many different ways. Please don’t be put off if you’re working, have young children, or other commitments. You don’t have to do everything in the church yourself, you just have to be willing to work with Nigel and I to help enable and encourage other people to help run the many different areas of church life. This link contains a good summary of the areas the role covers: https://www.london.anglican.org/kb/churchwardens/ **NEW** Afternoon Tea and Cake - Alzheimer’s Appeal 9th June, 2 – 4pm, Church Gardens Help us raise money for this great cause by joining us in the Garden for an afternoon of food and friendship. Raffle tickets available from Jackie Spry Cake donations on the day very gratefully received! If you can't attend, or even if you can, and would like to donate then you can scan the QR codes on the right or click on this Give-a-Little link Call for Submissions/Articles for the June/July 2023 Lemsford Parish Magazine Just 1 week to submission deadline! I've already, in a separate email, asked for submission from our regular contributors but for everyone else - anything you can think of, related to church, school or parish long or short (including snippets) will be gratefully received. The deadline (please) is 24th May - giving time to put the magazine together for the June 1st. But please, please don't wait til then Confirmation – 12th June If you haven’t been able to come on the ongoing Explorer course, but are still interested in being confirmed, please get in touch with Rev Kathryn. Confirmations will take place on the evening of 12th June at St Michael’s. Arrival of Rev’d Kate Douglas in September 2023 In case you missed the announcement, Rev’d Kate Douglas will be joining us from September as a Self-Supporting Minister. Kate has just entered her third year of curacy, and the intention is that she will then remain with us as a SSM. Kate is also becoming full time chaplain at Queenswood School in September, and will mainly be with us on Sundays and during school holidays. We look forward to welcoming and getting to know her in the Autumn. Please pray for her as she prepares to come and be with us. Food Bank Our local Food Bank at the New Zion Christian Fellowship church would appreciate receiving donations of food and other things from us now and all year round. It would be wonderful if you could support them by bringing various things in on Sunday mornings, and placing them in the big plastic box which will be placed in the porch. The sort of things the Food Bank would like to receive are: All food with good sell by dates (tins of fruit and veg, jams, packets of cereal, coffee, tea, long life milk and so on)Toiletries such as shampoo and conditioner and toilet rollsCleaning products (kitchen and bathroom cleaners etc) We are asked not to donate clothes. Nigel will arrange to take our offerings to the New Zion church every Wednesday morning. Parish MagazineDid you pick up or download the April/May Parish Magazine yet? Printed copies are available to pick up at the back of the church. You can also download the pdf version by clicking here. [You may want both: The printed copy (as usual) has a colour cover, and inside cover, but the rest is black and white to control costs. The pdf version is full colour, but we omit the directory page to stop it being misused when it appears on the web.] Please sign up for a spot in the Cleaning Rota Still slots to fill! "The Cleaning Rota" did not run during Covid and instead the Churchwardens Jenny and Nigel cleaned and disinfected per Covid best practice, but now it's time to ask for your help with getting the rota started again. Jenny will be contacting people who have previously taken a turn with cleaning. More volunteers are needed to help us. All the materials you'll need are provided. All that we need is your time! Let's spread this load between us all!! Please contact Jenny if you would like to take a turn with cleaning. You can choose a date that suits you! We continue to think of Ukraine: Update - John Blanch emailed me to say that the "Taste it Polish Restaurant" in Hatfield is no longer taking donations of clothing for Ukraine. However this doe snot stop our efforts. Bishop Alan says we can pray, and practically we also have an option to donate to the Red Cross Appeal which I again repeat here:To see their appeal details, please copy and paste this link into your browser: https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/ukraine-crisis-appeal. You may donate any amount you wish, and your cash will go towards helping people who are being affected by the crisis, by supplying them with food, water, first aid, medicines, warm clothes and shelter. Donations may be made direct to the Red Cross appeal, or alternatively, you may care to donate using the QR code below. The QR code will also be displayed in church. If you don't do QR Codes then clicking this link on your computer goes to the same "give-a-litte" link: https://givealittle.co/campaigns/753bbfac-510a-47d8-86cf-f6a707ddc585 Zoom Chat has moved to Mondays at 7pm We've moved our Zoom chat to Monday at 7pm and the first one went well. If you've found you couldn't get to the Sunday 4pm one, or never came to any, this is your chance - see below for joining link and details. Church Giving. We are now passing the offerings plate at services. I know that many of us are happiest giving cash rather than scanning QR codes or tapping payment cards or smartphones, so this is good news indeed. But, if you like the QR Code, you can point your Smartphone’s camera or QR app at it, and it will let you give, or from your PC/Mac you can just click this link: https://givealittle.co/campaigns/10cd954f-25f7-46d9-8813-634634729bfa. You can also give via the new (easy to use) card payment device – both at the back of the church - these donations go to St Johns funds. We are planning to make the QR Codes easily accessible from the pews too. Coffee and Chat Details: Topic: Coffee and Chat Time: Monday at 7pm - use this link Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81951586866?pwd=Z1ZhTjEycElnQjJmSWtrRkRBaWg0UT09 Meeting ID: 819 5158 6866 Passcode: 904402 Friendship Teas - every second Tuesday of the month at 2:30pm in the Annexe! The next one is this Tuesday 13th June 2023 at 2:30pm
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