From the “other side of the pond”

This is a copy of the email our team received from Pastor John Wonnacutt of the Springfield Methodist Church. John and Bernie, the Forthspring Director, hosted our team. The message is a nice “wrap-up” of the trip, but from the other side of the “pond”.

Dear Bill and Carol
Delighted to hear from you, I had hoped to send this to you before you sent to us and wrote the following:

I trust that the journey home went as well as those journeys can. Oh to be Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and be able to click our heels and be where we wished in an instant! I think the first couple of days after such a trip is so hard readjusting to ‘normality’. We certainly have found a change at the centre, it feels strange not to have you around! Hope you find the ‘re-entry’ to be reasonably smooth and there is room to have some R & R. (I suppose the limo helped the limo, hope you get a chance for lots of sleep)

Unfortunately to be at the meal and to wave farewell on Thursday morning proved to be impossible with Sophie and Sandra’s work schedule. I confess to not being very good at ‘goodbyes’. Later on Thursday I went to the airport to pick up Sandra’s mother and I smiled to hear Lionel Ritchie singing on the radio ‘Going to America’.

The last couple of days we have been pinching ourselves as we gaze in wonder at all you achieved. We now have two steel cupboards in the store having moved one from the vestry. Elsie Kirkpatrick is so pleased to be able to get the other steel cupboard out of the vestry which will make it much more homely and allows us to reconfigure the chairs making it more roomy. Next week the electrician will hopefully put the light downstairs in the store. Ricky has his eye on the remaining wood and plans with his brother in law (Barbara Watson’s brother) to put an additional shelf above the mezzanine floor. Super to see this initiative and enthusiasm. We returned the scaffold to the building site nearby. The local builders who supplied the scaffolding were delighted to hear how well the project had gone and were only too glad to be involved. The notice board in the hallway will be decorated for Sunday morning and provide a daily reminder to people coming in what is available at the church

We are so grateful for your servant leadership. The team you brought over was fantastic and so well chosen. The level of work both in terms of output and quality was phenomenal. They were gifted as well with the ability to roll with programme changes, get alongside local people and made use of all available opportunities to be a source of encouragement. As Bernie highlighted your presence with us achieved far more than the work that was done. You helped to remind us why we are there, that it is truly worthwhile and spurred us on to greater things.

As I said at the beginning we will remember yourselves as you ‘come back to earth’. I pray that your own congregation and other congregations will be able to celebrate all that you have achieved. Clearly they caught the vision from the last trip and ‘got’ what had gone on. We had mentioned that the peace process needs to happen on at least two levels to moveforward; at institutional level and at grassroots. You came to Belfast when there were seismic changes at institutional level and simultaneously you made such a difference at grassroots. I would love to share something of all that we experienced with yourselves with the VIM rep/committee. Would you have a contact email for such a person? I would be very grateful when you get an opportunity.

Other developments since you left.. One of the Springfield Road congregation was bereaved the day you left, Rita Glass’s husband died. She was not able to meet you as her husband was very ill. The funeral will be from their home which is just beside Olivia’s home on Tuesday morning. It was Rita who introduced Olivia to the centre and the church. Tomorrow in Sandy Row the outgoing Secretary of the Methodist Church in Ireland Rev Winston Graham will come and preach. The sound system that was being installed last week was tried out last night and the congregational representatives are very happy. (Phew!!!) This weekend as a family we are having fun as Sandra is away with her two sisters and her mother has come to stay which is a whole new experience!

Well I think I will let you go and get another mug of ‘proper coffee’ and let your minds, hearts and bodies further recuperate. once again many thanks for all that you have done for our centre, congregation and ourselves as individuals.

Kind regards

John, Sandra and Sophie

This entry was posted on May 25, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Ireland 2007 Mission Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.