Chaplain’s Letter
A year ago Bishop Geoffrey launched his Lent appeal on behalf of our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Diocese of Luweero in Uganda. Chaplaincies across the Diocese, including ours, responded with great generosity and raised over £10,000. Here are some of the things that this Appeal will enable to happen.
8000 trees will be planted benefitting countless numbers of people living in the rural areas of the Diocese and make a serious contribution to re-forestation in one of the poorest areas of Uganda.
Three motorcycles will be purchased to enable Archdeacons to reach some of the remoter areas of the Diocese where access is normally earth roads and tracks.
Funds will be sent to the Healthy Vine Trust to help build and equip a maternity unit at the Sekamuli health clinic, reducing maternal deaths and infant mortality.
The Luweero Diocese and Healthy Vine Trust praise and thank the Lord for the generosity shown by the Chaplaincies throughout the Diocese of Europe in response to Bishop Geoffrey’s 2011 Lent Appeal.
However there is always more to be done. Today Pam and I had lunch with Pam and Jay Dennett who have been the main field workers for the Healthy Vine Trust in the Sekamuli parish for several years. They too were delighted with the result of the Bishop’s Lent appeal, but they also confided to us that the work of the Healthy Vine Trust has only received half of the €60,000 funds that they need to do the work that needs to be done.
So may I appeal on their behalf to the generosity of individual Holy Trinity members and also to our Chaplaincy Council and to our Charitable Giving Committee to continue to support Pam and Jay’s work with as much generosity as we can muster?
You will find details of their work on www.healthy-vine.org
And finally is there anyone in the church who would like to be our link person with this work – an enthusiast who would keep in touch with the Archdeaconry Luweero link and the work of the Healthy Vine Trust, and bring us all regular updates and challenge our generosity and call us to prayer on a regular basis? If this appeals to you please let me know because we urgently need someone to do this for us all.
Yours in Christ
John
Wikileaks for Choirs Part XII: striking the right chord.
We are all God’s creatures. Some lonely or eccentric people join choirs because it is less intimidating than a singles club, a group therapy, or a blind date. It is equally less demanding because they don’t have to keep the conversation going all the time. They are often the unsung or unheard heroes of the choir. One chorister worked as a volunteer for the local hospital by wheeling patients confined in their wheelchair or hospital beds to the chapel for the Sunday morning service. The moment he sang he failed to mark his mark. He opened his mouth as a lion who was about to roar, but sang as quiet as a mouse. He only had his glorious moment when the choir master paid the basses a compliment. He radiated with joy as a puppy wagging his tail.
In the Bach cantatas there was also a man who looked quite lost behind his musical scores. If he showed up in the Parsonage with that expression on his face dozens of members from the congregation would have come up to him and ask him if he needed any help. But like the previous chorister he hardly emitted any sound whilst singing. But he seemed to fit in with the choir as a former choirmaster of Holy Trinity Church once divided choristers of the Bach cantata into 5 categories: “With the Bach cantata you have 5 parts. The sopranos, the altos, the tenors, the basses and the inaudible ones”.
Particularly very musically gifted people do not always find it easy to strike the right chord with other people. Sometimes they are simply not on the same wavelength than us. Take for instance one chorister in the Bach cantatas. He baffled all the great experts on Bach by showing that he knew all the music by heart. He was just about the only chorister who watched the directions of the musical director without hiding his face in the scores. One lady tried to chat him up during one of the breaks in a rehearsal, but he did not reply to her chatter at all. He seemed perfectly happy in his own world.
Sometimes choristers expect their choir master to be far more expedient in communicating than themselves. They wish that there is a bit of God in their choir master. One lady complained that her choir master did not say a word when she came in late into the rehearsal after visiting a good friend on her sickbed. “Why doesn’t he understand me,” she said as if she thought that he was some kind of medium who recognized that she was going through a rough time. But there are some choir masters who can communicate very well what they mean. Take for instance a choirmaster of the Bach cantata who had to refrain himself from shouting annoyed by the whispers of two choristers. He did fall into the mad but brilliant category of choir masters. He went ballistic the moment one chorister in a group of a hundred choristers pitched a different note than the others and was able to single him or her out from the rest. He once pointed at one chorister and said: “Yes, you sir, in the third row, second from the left, would you mind not singing the c sharp! Do like all the others, please! ”. This comes very close to a public execution.
Mad but brilliant conductors are long talked about even after they are long gone. Some years ago a chorister in one of the city churches said: “Did you read the correspondence of J.S. Bach with the church council of Leipzig? Oh, boy, Bach was a downright bully!”. The acolyte who overheard that remark referred to the choir master as that “b______ on the organ loft” and wondered when the correspondence between this choir master and the church council would be published. “Perhaps in three hundred year’s time,” I blurted out to the acolyte who immediately recomposed himself.
Chemistry between a choir master and his or hers choristers should not be taken for granted. I recall moments of magic with several choir masters. There used to be a choir master who was a piano virtuoso and not only accompanied the choir but for instance played Bach tunes and converted them into a jazzy tunes, Mozart, or Vivaldi. Every chorister was spellbound once he started to play the piano., and the choir master did not have to raise his voice to get everybody’s attention. I recall another choir master who trod very carefully with the choir and if things got more difficult she could say teasingly: “Do you hate me now?”
As a commuter I witness many scenes where people can get their wires crossed. In the tram two trainee nurses on their way to hospital exchanged gossip about their tutor who was too soft on them. Suddenly their conversation halted. A ticket inspector asked one of them to show her ticket. She showed him her travel card, but told him that she had forgotten to check in. The man tried a heavy handed approach as he lowered his voice: “But we need you to check for the statistics”. “Statistics,” the girl wondered. “Yes, the statistics,” the man spurted out as Captain Manwaring saying”: “Don’t you know that there is a war going on!”. “We have to know who is going on this tram route!”. The girl began to argue with him that she had not been able to find a check-in gate before boarding the tram. The ticket inspector warned her that she would be fined next time and told her to check in first. “Remember! We need it for the statistics. We need to know who goes on this tram route,” he said in an agitated voice. Then he turned away from her, muttering to his colleague: “Why did she argue with me?”. Indeed, striking the right chord with other people is a form of art that not everyone masters.
This is the last Wikileaks for choirs. I will further dedicate my time to writing a history of Holy Trinity Church set against the backdrop of Anglo-Dutch relations and then come back to writing new articles for Holy Trinity Newsletter
Bye for now. Arnold .
Thank-you Arnold for your entertaining articles. We wish you success with your writing a history of Holy Trinity Church and look forward to welcoming you back to our list of contributors later in the year. From your editor.
CTC Childrens Trinity Club Corner
Hi there! Here we are in – almost in February; ploughing on through the wet and windy winter – though it may have turned colder by the time you read this, and if so we hope with brighter skies! Certainly the first shoots have been peeping through the quite soft ground since January in the eternal cycle of renewal. But before we move on in this new year, let’s just have a quick look back to the Crib service for the younger children.
Gonny reports that about 60 people; children and parents, grandparents and friends were present at the joyful service, gathered together round the crib, united by the wondrous event of God’s gift to us of the baby Jesus. The Christmas story was told by Madeleine (de Boer) in English and by Gonny (CTC team leader) in Dutch while the service was taken by Chris (Reverend Chris Nicholls). A calypso carol was accompanied by all the children each playing an instrument and though you’d think it could have been a very noisy affair, in the event the children kept it to quite a modest outburst! Afterwards all were welcomed in the parsonage for an after-the-crib-service party organized by Jan (van der Kooy) with much enthusiasm and a jolly time was had by all. Good to see too that the Crib Service attracts a good number of children and grown-ups from the surrounding neighbourhood who come just for this service every year.
The themes planned for the CTC children for the month of January begin with the Three Kings on Sunday 8th January, the Wedding at Cana, Jesus’ First Disciples and for the last Sunday of January – Jesus Drives An Evil Spirit Out.
For any newcomers it might be good to mention that the CTC Childrens Sunday School is held in the parsonage ( right round the corner from Church) every Sunday at 10.30 except for the first Sunday of every month which is All Age Worship. There are two age groups, roughly 3-7 yr olds and 8-11 yr olds. There is also a crèche run by Mums each Sunday (except AA Worship), All come into church just after the Intercession prayers so we can share the Peace together and prepare for Holy Communion together. Much information is of course also available on Holy Trinity’s site on the Internet. We hope any newcomers will feel very welcome and find their way to joining in with the childrens’ and teenagers’ groups
STOP PRESS****!
From the beginning of this year Pam is handing over the leadership of the Teenage Group to a new team of younger leaders and they are:-
Rosemarie Strengholt, Roos Vonk, and Marijn Verwijs.
Please pray for them and for the young people in the Teenage Sunday School meeting once a month on the second Sunday,
And on this high note – that was it for now till next month!
Nicky for CTC
kind in tuin
wat is er vrediger op een
zonnige windstille ochtend
dan een kind in de tuin
spelend op zijn xylofoon –
de klanken dwarrelen
door de lucht
lichte kleurige klanken
hoog laag laag hoog
nu eens aarzelend
dan weer moedig
verder met de melodie
kortjakje en het boek
vol zilverwerk in
kinderlach alom –
lief kind
verleng nog even de tijd –
Oeke Kruythof
Child in the garden
What can be more uplifting
than on a calm sunny morning
to hear a child in the garden
playing his xylophone
The notes whirl through the air
light colourful sounds
high low low high
now hesitantly
and then again bravely on
with the tune of
twinkle twinkle little star
the silvery notes enfolded in
the child’s laughter
Give us dear child
eternal time
Oeke Kruythof
Translation/transcreation Jenny Narraway
Used Postage Stamps
Many postage stamps these days are little works of art. What is more, their market value is expected to rise in this era of emails and text messages, because people now send fewer letters but the number of stamp collectors in the world continues to increase. So, instead of throwing those pretty stamps away, why not save them for recycling?
Several organizations can turn used stamps into useful cash. One of these is ICS (the Intercontinental Church Society). They have a stamp bureau in the UK which receives and sorts used stamps (anything except the British ones with only the Queen’s head on them). The stamps are then sold to collectors, most of them raising at least 5 pence per stamp. There is also a strong market for first day covers, albums, and stamp or coin collections (do you have one in your loft?). ICS raises as much as ?2000 a year in this way, a significant contribution to the cost of ministry to tourists on holiday in Europe, or starting new congregations, or maintaining the historic English churches in Zermatt and Wengen in Switzerland.
You can pick up a stamp collecting bag at Holy Trinity (from the table in the parsonage) and when the bag is full it is ready to stamp and send to the stamp bureau in England. They will send you a new collecting bag to continue the good work.
If anyone would like to take over the small task of keeping the supply of envelopes going on behalf of Holy Trinity, please let me know.
Pam de Wit
Maya Hoogveld has asked me to include a short article about a Houten couple who founded a home for single mothers and their children in Nepal several years ago.
They help the mothers learn to be independent members of the community, to earn enough money to support their children and to be able to send their children to school. In this way they can obtain a worthy position in society.
Some of the clothes and toys that are donated by members of Holy Trinity for which we are very grateful, are given to this house.
Maya has asked for our help with transporting these goods to Kathmandu. Does anyone in our congregation have connections with an air company that would be willing and able to do this. The Netherlands do not have direct air communications with Nepal but the United Kingdom do.
If any one can help, please contact Maya by email.
Thank-you in advance for your help.
Prayer Chain
If you have any requests for the prayer chain, or if you feel called to take part in this ministry, please contact Anne Miechielsen
From the Student Pastor
This month I’ll be starting my second year as a student pastor. I am thankful that the PCC has chosen to renew my contract. Although I sometimes feel there is only so much I can do (and little result). But in the end, it is not number of students coming to the Sunday services or activities that counts. The results of my work are not always that evident, but I think we’ve started something wonderful and, with God’s help, our student ministry is making Holy Trinity into a more welcoming church for students and young people and enabling them to connect to God during their stay in the Netherlands.
Charity dinner(s)
This spring, there will be lots of opportunity to get yourself a good meal and do something for a worthy cause at the same time (apparently, it’s the time to eat this year)!
27 February– 20 March the Christian student unions are hosting ‘Happietaria’ in Utrecht. This is a student-run restaurant in ‘Huis aan de Werf’ at Boorstraat 107. All the profits go to a food security program in Uganda, supported by the Christian charity ‘Tear’ (linked with Tear fund UK). If you want to book, go to their website www.happietaria-utrecht.nl (in Dutch) for more information.
Thursday evening 8th March there will be a Charity Dinner in the Lutheran Church (Hamburgerstraat 9), hosted and cooked by students. In this way the Student Chaplaincy IPSU (of which we are a part) will participate in the Utrecht ‘Ragweek’, a week in which students will organize all kinds of charity events. All profits will go to UAF Vluchtelingen-Studenten en Humana. More information will follow in due course.
From the Bible Study Group
A report from the Advent Studies
During the summer our group of bible-study leaders had been put together and prepared by Pam the Wit. In order to be well prepared we chose to do some bible-studies in our own small circle, just to experiment and to gain confidence. Our goal was to really be ready for four bible-studies in advent. We prayed and thought about an appropriate theme. What came up was the coming of the Lord in the Old Testament. We felt this would help us to grow in our understanding of the incarnation (God become man) and the hope we have of Jesus' coming again. There is lots of choice here. Mamolepa and Madeleine prepared the first evening and felt there was really too much choice in the 5 books of Moses alone. We spent an exiting evening discovering how God had literally prophesied in these books how His son would come to conquer sin and save creation. We listened, we read, we discussed and discovered how clear God is. Stephan and Andrew took us through the psalms in a PowerPoint presentation and then we discussed in smaller groups and presented to each other the results. Adrian and Danielle took a different turn, not prophesies in words but in history. King David and Solomon showed the world lots of aspects of the future King in their characters and in their lives. Hans and Isabelle helped us find many passages in the prophets of the Old Testament and link them to similar passages in the New Testament.
Attendance was good with 10 to 20 people present. We learned from the Bible, but also very much from each other. Especially in the smaller groups we really enjoyed discovering how our fellow-Christians had so much to offer, in thoughts and insights, in experience and living faith. Don't think we all knew the bible by heart. We didn't and we still don't. But what we do know is that God is there to be found, and we can help each other finding Him.
January/February studies on the Letter of James
We will start this year by studying the Letter of James. James has a very practical view of Christianity. Faith is no abstract theory or feeling. It must be acted upon! We look forward being encouraged and challenged by studying his letter together. You can at any time join in!
24th January – James 1 and 2 (by Adrian and Danielle Los)
31st January – James 3 and 4 (by Hans and Isabelle Baars)
14th February – James 5 (by Stephan Westerbeek and Joel van Rossum)
During Lent, Christians all over the world take some extra time to study God’s Word together. Holy Trinity is no exception. We will follow the way of the cross and of the resurrection of our Lord. And we will look on its impact on our lives and on our world. We will have two groups meeting on different days and in different places. So there will be a Lent Study on all Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s during Lent, except March 20th/21st. Specific details will be published as soon as possible.
Written by Peter Boswijk
Number crunching
In the January Newsletter Father John thanked everyone who helped get the church windows restored; and there were many who helped. Not in the least through their donations. Going through my files I came across the first article I wrote about the Windows Fund, appealing for 50,000 euros to restore the West Window. This was in June 2008.
All the windows were finished just before Christmas 2011. I would like to give a short overview of the finances involved in restoring the church windows. The total cost for all the windows was 230,000 euros. This was paid for with 70,000 euros in special donations from you, 60,000 euros in subsidy and 95,000 euros from the church funds. Thank you, for all your donations.
Sandra Sue
The Ups and Downs of Country Life
The house looked so warm and inviting. It was an overcast day in early spring. The light was on in the kitchen and it caught the daffodils growing under the window. There wasn’t much in the way of a yard; mostly an overgrown gravel area with trees and bushes, just enough room for perhaps three cars. We bought the house of course – how could we resist after seeing it under such idyllic circumstances. Perhaps we should have given more thought to the work that this house would entail to knock it into the shape we wanted, but that’s hindsight for you.
The first project was the yard. The over-tall willow right in the middle had to go. Then I took an instant dislike to a hawthorn that ripped the antenna off my car. That went too. There was an oil tank buried in one corner and since we were going over to gas, that had to come out as well. Before long we had created a space quite big enough for our cars. We even got new gravel put down and very smart it all looked. Until the moles got at it! Gradually the pristine parking lot turned into a quagmire. The time had come to get it paved. A new company had just opened down the road so we got them to come and give us an estimate for the work. They measured and poked and dug sample holes, then went into a huddle, rather like a rugby scrum, in one corner of the yard, made some notes on their clip board and then drove off. That was the last we ever saw or heard of them! Phone calls produced empty promises and before long, their premises closed down. So we went elsewhere. This time with more success and within no time, the yard was levelled and paved and at a very reasonable price.
They say that you get what you pay for and that was certainly the case with our yard. It only took a couple of months for the first dips and gulleys to form as the bricks sank. But it was no longer a quagmire and for that we were very grateful. Then more valleys began to appear as our friends the moles got amorous and went in search of mates, tunnelling under the inadequate foundations of our paved front. Oh, by the way, the company that did the work had gone bust as well so there was nowhere where we could seek redress.
Then the septic tank started playing up which meant that we had to dig up a fair stretch of the yard. Re-laid bricks are never level, so the paving began to look like a lunar landscape. Then the house burned down.
We lived in a caravan for 18 months during the wrangling and rebuilding and, guess what: we had to dig up the yard to run out power and water! The lunar valleys got deeper which was great fun when it rained.
Once the new house was finished we decided to find yet another company that could relay the whole mess. A friend of a friend. That seemed like a good recommendation. At least we would be able to trace him if things went wrong! However, this time the job was done properly with a well-levelled sandy foundation. Unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men, or in this case, sandy groundwork, present no obstacle at all to our friends the moles when their hormones begin to flow and slowly but surely the dips reappeared. Live with them we thought; they could be worse. And then the corporation decreed that rural properties like ours had to be fitted with special, all singing, all dancing septic tanks – and what an image that conjures up! So the whole mess had to be dug up yet again.
It was only after the work was finished that we realised that the manhole covers for the tank, which had to be 4 cm above the level of the yard, were higher than necessary and stuck up above the level of the parking lot, almost enough to tip a trailer! This time it was the city council that had done the work so they were easy enough to collar! But, you guessed it, up came all the bricks around the tank. The corporation may have installed the tank, but we had to connect it. Since the tank was about as far away from the house as you could get and still be on our property, connecting the drains left a gulley that stretched just about the whole length of the yard; by now you could almost draw up an ordinance survey map of the parking area complete with contour lines and the lot!
Now there was another side to this tale. Our property consists of two parts, the new building and the original farmhouse which dates from the 1950s. That house sits lower than the new building and since the manhole covers have to be 4 cm above ground level, they stand nearly 10 centimetres above the old house. This means that there is a substantial run-off towards the old farmhouse when it rains, which it does quite often in this country. Now the water doesn’t actually run into the house, it soaks into the ground and from there it floods the cellar. The time had come to tackle this situation head on. Quite by chance, we discovered that the tree surgeon who designed our garden also does paving and since he is a reliable chap – and I know where he lives! – I got him to come and look the job over. From his first visit it was clear that we were dealing with a serious and professional guy. He pointed out that the parking area was simply too large to deal with rain in any quantities and it needed at least one central drain with longitudinal drains to deal with the run-off to the old house. His price was reasonable and within budget so the deal was struck. And so it was that early one Saturday morning, as dawn was breaking, I heard singing (rather out of tune) coming from the lane alongside our property. It was Marco on his digger, as happy as Larry, trundling out to our place to start work with his mates. It made me think of Snow White’s seven dwarfs, although there were only four of them. They worked with obvious pleasure and efficiency. He even had a solution to the mole problem. The kerbs along the edges of the paved area were mounted on a deep foundation of sand mixed with cement. Once that hardened, there would be no way the little critters could get under the yard. The drains went in and the brickwork was finished to perfection.
And so it is that now when it rains, the water runs off into the drains and out to the ditch. The cellar has so far stayed dry. Oh, and the moles, active in the mild weather, have been banging their little heads against the cement foundations and instead of having lumps and bumps in the yard, we have lots of molehills along the edge of the paving. The lunar landscape has simply relocated!
Harry
Services at Holy Trinity Church, Utrecht
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