Thank you all for the wonderful welcome you have given to me, Neil, Toby and Guy.  Your encouragement and support for this time of settling in has helped considerably. I want especially to mention John Page, Martin and Dudley (the Churchwardens), for getting the house ready and preparing for the licensing and installation.  What a lovely service of welcome for us; my Mum, who is not a churchgoer, said she thought the service was really special: "full of love".  I heartily agree! John generously said at the welcome party that he felt God had called me here, and I feel that too: Hale with Badshot Lea is the answer to our prayers.

PASSION plays and religious theatre were once a regular part of Easter week but, though there are still famous productions, these days for many people this is unfamiliar territory. But the idea was revived last week in St George's Church in Badshot Lea when a band of actors performed Company on the Road.

This letter covers not only two months, but possibly the fullest two months in the Church’s year. As you read this, Advent will be about to start; by the time you read my next letter, we will not only have observed the season of Advent, with all its anticipation and preparation for Christmas, but Christmas and Epiphanytide as well, and be looking forward to Candlemas at the start of February – the feast day which closes the forty-day Christmas celebrations.

Many readers will know that for the past three years or so I have been training as a Counsellor and Psychotherapist at Roehampton University. The course has been challenging in many expected and also unexpected ways.