May 2009

Dear Friends,

Happy Easter! Like Lent, the season of Easter lasts for forty days to Ascension Day, on 21st May, and longer, to the Feast of Pentecost (Whitsun) on 31st May, and the joy of Easter lasts for ever! I went to the Governing Body meetings at Llandudno on 20th April and greatly enjoyed the visit, not for the meetings but for Llandudno, which I had never visited before and realised what I had missed!

In this year of the child, we had many presentations and reports about children’s projects and youth work. St. Asaph Diocese did a presentation of their work with Under 25s. We heard from social responsibility officers of their work on children and parenting. There are no problem children, there are only problem parents, or bad parenting. The Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Mr. Keith Towler, gave us an impressive address and we heard from the Mothers’ Union of their work with children in Wales and of the success of the Archbishop of Wales’ Fund for Children, particularly through the work of the Newport Committee in which members of our own parish are involved.

We voted overwhelmingly in favour of the new services of Morning and Evening Prayer, which is more than that, because the printed book, now being produced by the Canterbury Press, includes other offices, such as an Order for
Prayers during the day and for Night Prayer, which used to be called Compline.

We also expressed our sympathy with the people of Gaza City over the destruction of their Family Health Centre on 10th January, and we commended the work of the Church in Wales Jubilee Fund in supporting the North East Council of Churches in the rebuilding of the Family Centre and the restocking of medicines and equipment for the pharmacy and mobile dental clinic. We went further than this, because we voted overwhelmingly to ask our parishes to raise money for the Jubilee Fund in partnership with the NECC in Gaza. Our aim is to hold “Wales’ Biggest Coffee Morning” for this fund. The Coffee Morning was originally planned throughout Wales for 2nd May, but that has proved to be too soon for some of us, and the Coffee Morning for Gaza will be held in our Church Room on Saturday 23rd May at 11 a.m.

We had very good services in Caerleon and Llanhennock for Easter Day. Everyone had worked hard to prepare our churches with beautiful floral displays and the music befitted the occasion. Many people were present also on the following Sunday for the baptism of Benjamin Michael Denton, whose parents will certainly take seriously his baptismal promises. What about the rest of us? Can we be determined in our Easter joy to resolve the real crisis, not cash crunch but Sunday worship Church crunch?
Your friend and Vicar,

Arthur Edwards