18b The Granville, Hotel Road, St Margaret's Bay, Dover, Kent. CT15 6DX

This comes with all good wishes as we prepare to celebrate the incarnation of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ!  I was in Bethlehem last month (see below) and it was a great joy to be at the actual place where Jesus was born – an event which is the turning point of History.  May God bless you in the year of our Lord 2020 !

“Could it be true, this Bethlehem story of a Creator descending to be born on one small planet?  If so, it is a story like no other.  Never again need we wonder whether what happens on this little planet matters to the rest of the universe.  Little wonder a choir of angels broke out in spontaneous song, disturbing not only a few shepherds but the entire universe.”

https://thevalueofsparrows.com/2012/12/30/christmas-meditation-the-visited-planet-by-philip-yancey/

 Emily with Martha and Phoebe on their 3^rd birthday!

Oliver (7) and Daniel (9) with my mother (98!)

One of my greatest joys is being a grandfather!  With Edward and family just over 20 miles away, I am first call for baby-sitting!  And I have loved being able to go to events and performances at the boys’ school. 

Emily and family have been to stay with me 6 times this year, and I have stayed with them in Wimbledon many times too. Last month I watched Martha and Phoebe at their weekly tennis lesson!  Jane would be SO thrilled! 

This year I have been on three charity visits abroad.  In August I was part of a group from St Gregory’s Foundation visiting projects they support in Moscow and St Petersburg.  We also did some wonderful sightseeing, and I was delighted to be able to take part in the Sunday Liturgy at Grand Duchess Elisabeth’s Martha Mary Convent in Moscow. We also spent a couple of days in Karelia, 250 miles north east of Piter, where we stayed in the parish of Kondopoga. In 1991 20 Christians in the town wrote to the newly installed bishop and said, “Our last priest was shot in 1937: please may we have another one?”  Fr Lev was sent, and he is still there! The congregation has grown to 800, and the parish and the town have been transformed. We were entertained by a group of children who had just come back from summer camp, and we went to the parish dacha by a beautiful lake, where we were taken out in rowing boats. Idyllic!

In October I went with a group from ‘Embrace the Middle East’ (aka the Biblelands Society) to join a larger group helping Palestinian farmers with the olive harvest, in a project initiated by the E Jerusalem YMCA. It was heartbreaking to witness the intimidation and violence inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israeli settlers. I have always been pro-Israel, but this time it was unmasked for me as a vicious apartheid state which steals land and resources.  Amos 5:24.  Lord have mercy.  On the Sunday I was able to go to the Liturgy at the convent in Gethsemane where Grand Duchess Elisabeth is buried.  I was also able to visit the new Jerusalem house of the Darmstadt Mary Sisters.

And last month I visited Bulgaria again on behalf of ‘Military Ministries International’ (of which I am a trustee), to speak at a conference in the theological faculty of Sofia university about chaplaincy in the British Army – a subject I know much more about now than I did two months ago!!

Mollie continues to be a great companion, but like me she is creaking at the joints and suffering from arthritis. She stayed in Wimbledon while I was in Bulgaria, and Martha and Phoebe loved having her!

Don't forget that I do a good line in sea-side bed-and-breakfast!