Thought For The Week 4 September 2022

There’s a lovely verse from the Song of Songs; “See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land” (2:11-12). As we enter September we enter the season of spring and farewell the winter- a winter that has been very wet and wild! Hopefully the spring won’t be as wild.

Whatever the weather does it will be a busy month in the life of our church. Work is well underway to establish a new community garden outside the Trinity Centre. Funding for this came from the  Alpine Presbytery ‘Have a go fund’ which provides grants of $1000 to initiate new mission and outreach to our communities. The idea of the garden is to bring folk in the area together, rub shoulders with church folk working together to produce a crop that can also be used to support the Family Works cooking lessons initiative, using the refurbished kitchen.

The garden at St Stephen’s, while not a community garden as such, is looked after by Lindsay Burgess and a group of Solomon Island freezing workers who benefit from what they grow and pass on any surplus to us and the Salvation Army. Bev Quigley also looks after a section of this reserved for our church and she primarily uses it to raise plants for the Plant Sale.

Speaking of which, the Plant Sale (17 th Sept at St Stephens) is coming up fast. This includes baked items as well as plants and all contributions are gratefully accepted and can be dropped off in the days leading up to the event.

A group of us (myself, Catherine, Helen, Lois, Judith and Rory) will be heading to West Melton for the Alpine Presbytery Spring gathering (16-17 Sept). The gathering attends to the Presbytery business (approving the budget and such) as well as providing refreshing content and networking and fellowship opportunities.

Nga mihi nui

Brent