Reading the news letter from St Andrews Church, I found an interesting letter from Pat Etherington, which talks about the past October activities at St Andrews and this is shown below.
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Readers Mail
From Pat Etherington…
Hello Everybody,
Well we certainly had a lovely start to our worship in October as we welcomed a group of 24 people who were on a Pilgrimage and that most joyful of occasions, a baptism. They all looked so happy that she had been received into the church. The downstairs hall was again put to good use for the overflow congregation.
We seem to have had an exceptionally large number of visitors over the past few weeks and I’m sure we all find it very pleasant, when they find their way down into the hall for coffee and a chat after the service.
Well, as promised Portsmouth Cathedral Girl Choristers and Choral scholars came to perform at St Andrew’s on the 24th and they were certainly worth waiting for!
Evensong is not a service we normally celebrate, which made it even more appealing and being a relative newcomer to the Anglican Faith I have never before taken part in a choral evensong, which gave it even more impact for me. It was such a beautiful service and they all seemed to enjoy singing, as much as we enjoyed listening to them. The evening concert surpassed everyone’s expectations, I was certainly reminded of the hymn which says “Let the organ thunder” because it surely did to such great effect. The Director of Music, Dr David Price, even gave our organ a compliment!
The evening programme included works by Vaughan Williams, Brahms, Howells and McCartney (a detailed list is given on the St Andrew’s website Click here) and also featured organ solos including one given by the Cathedral’s organ scholar Ben Banks. We all joined the choir in singing the hymn “Angel Voices, ever singing” . Altogether a magnificent evening!!
A very different evening was held in the Hermitage gardens on Saturday 21st October. A well attended talk was given by Miko Peled, an Israeli peace activist, which was certainly very thought provoking. To bring about a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be a magnificent achievement.
On Thursday November 2nd we will be having our All Souls service at 2.pm.
Our weather is really cooling down now and we have had some rain, not as much as the paper threatened us with, but a start. The bulk of our rain seems to arrive after the New Year, so we have a while to wait yet. I think swims in the pool are just about over for this year.
Well I think I have brought you up to date on our activities for now.
So love to all
Pat Etherington
