I am a grammar pedant. Spelling mistakes and misused punctuation shouts at me from miles away. That is why God gave me a dyslexic husband – he knew that I needed to increase in grace. But also that someone needed to correct the Vicar’s spelling before his communications are let loose on the world.
I came across this excellent site the other day. It’s a grammar pedant’s delight. And I shall be wielding my camera next time I see a suitable “candidate” for inclusion.
[HT India Knight]
Posted in Fun | Tagged Fun, Grammar, pedant, quotation marks, Spelling | 3 Comments »
I'm definitely not this glamorous at the school gate
I’d like to tell you about the first time I talked to my friend Diamond. We’d just moved into the Vicarage and the kids had started at the new school. I was on a new school gate.
The old one was where I met my friends, chatted and hung about till I was thrown out by teachers wanting to get on with the lessons. Here I just had to hang onto the kids for comfort.
The new school gate was the one where I didn’t know anyone, but some of them already knew me. Diamond came up to me on one of those first days and said:
You’re the Vicar’s Wife, aren’t you?
We went to see some strippers last night. But I was so drunk I fell asleep and missed it.
I wasn’t sure what she was expecting me to say, but I commented
Sounds like a bit of an expensive way to take a nap.
And then she wandered back to her ‘gang’.
She must have liked my response, cos now she’s my friend. But, boy, was that a scary way to begin.
Posted in School, Vicar's wife job description | Tagged School, School gate, strippers, Vicar's wife, Vicar's wife's job description | 1 Comment »
A friend of ours had a debate with the Vicar recently. Our friend was not convinced that Christians could be funny. So the Vicar went surfing to find some Christian comedians.
Here’s one of the results which we enjoyed – it’s Michael Jr (who I’ve discovered has a blog himself):
We’re looking forward to seeing some more of his material.
Posted in Faith, Fun | Tagged Christian comedy, comedy, Fun, funny, humour, Michael Jr | 4 Comments »
I thought I’d share with you this morning’s post bag of seven items. I quite enjoy opening post, so this lot has fallen to me since we’ve moved in. Today’s haul fell into two categories (neither of them involving cheques, lovenotes or cards for the family):
Real church business
Unsolicited church mail
I am trying to cut back on the straight to bin filing method by cutting mailings off at source. Just opening these things takes time and I reckon I must have recycled at least one tree of junk mail by now. No-one at all in our church would have the money or the inclination to go to Oberammergau, so I am returning these to the sender, with a note on the front asking them to remove us from their mailing list.
I am doing the same with the Build Africa mailing. Worthy though they no doubt are, our small church cannot support them as well as the other fourteen charities we give to on a regular basis. Retail essentials is getting the same treatment. I think they started sending it when the church hall kitchen was refurbished.
I think I will put the Agape brochure in the back of church, but I am not sure what to do with the mailing from the mobility shop. I’m tempted to return it to sender too. It’s tricky to handle these things with grace. A church is not a marketing agency, but we obviously want to be compassionate towards those trying make a living during this tricky economic time.
When the Vicar and I moved in here, we registered with the Mailing Preference Service, but this sadly doesn’t seem to work for items addressed to the church. I guess the church must count as a business. If you’re a Vicar or Vicar’s wife, how much church junk mail do you get and what do you do with it? How do you avoid drowning in the stuff?
Posted in Church, Vicar's wife job description | Tagged Church, direct marketing, junk mail, mailing preference service, mobility services, Oberammergau, post, unsolicited mail, vicar, Vicar's wife, Vicar's wife job description | 4 Comments »
The Queen has learnt a story off by heart at school this term (just like her brother). Her Year 3 class had been studying Australia and the oral story-telling tradition of the Aborigine people. And so they learnt to tell a story, with actions. I’m not sure this story is Australian, though.
Posted in Fun, Kids | Tagged Children, Fun, Kids, story, story telling, tale, talking papaya | 1 Comment »
Some folk think that it must be scary living in our parish, with its deprivation, drug dealers and people like Gone. Last week I found some great quotes on what we should really be afraid of, selected by étrangère from Tim Chester’s recent book ‘The Ordinary Hero‘. I’ve been thinking I should buy it to read this holiday, but slightly fearing to aswell.
Posted in Inner city | Tagged deprivation, drugs, fear, Inner city, Ordinary Hero, Tim Chester | 5 Comments »
Since it’s the summer hols, posting is going to be a bit light. My brain is fried after nearly five months of Vicar’s Wifeing, but I’ll put up a few fun things over the coming weeks to cheer us all up as the rain reminds us we live in the Wet Midlands.
When I was posting the Seeds Family Worship kinetic typography the other week, I came across this song. It’s the best books of the bible song I’ve come across, and I’ve looked at a good few.
Please excuse the American pronunciation for various books (Isaiah, Hosea and Philemon) plus the references cited as being from ‘Psalms’. We are finding it easy to forgive them cos the kids love this song. But don’t worry, we’ll make sure they pronounce everything correctly (or at least with a Black Country accent).
Posted in Fun, Kids | Tagged Bible, bible memory, Bigsby Show, Books of the Bible, Fun, Kids, New Testament, Old Testament, song, YouTube | 4 Comments »
Cooking lessons are also possible
Together with a room in the Vicarage, tons of interesting ministry experience in our parish and a place on the Midlands Ministry Training Course. See the Vicar’s post and check out his blog to find out who’d be training you.
We’d love to have someone join us who’s passionate about Jesus and keen to share that passion with folk in our deprived multi-cultural parish.
Posted in Church | Tagged apprentice, apprenticeship, Inner city, Jesus, lay assistant, Midlands Ministry Training Course, ministry trainee, MMTC, parish, parish assistant, Vicarage | Leave a Comment »
There’s been a bit of a debate started over at the Cranmer’s Curate blog about the role of a Vicar’s Wife. If you’re one of my Vicar’s wife readers, why don’t you join in? Most of the early posts seemed to be from Vicars, not their wives.
Posted in vicar, Vicar's wife job description | Tagged Church, Church of England, CofE, vicar, Vicar's wife, Vicar's wife job description | 10 Comments »
Well, obviously I don’t really hate foreign. Or I would be completely bonkers to be a Vicar’s Wife in our multi-cultural parish. I love foreign people, and I loved living and working in foreign lands (the Far East, for nearly six years). But moving somewhere new – and therefore foreign – is hard.
We didn't actually need this when we moved recently
When the Vicar and I first moved to Malaysia (there’s foreign for you), we joined a church with links to Wycliffe Bible Translators. And one day a representative from that organisation came to teach the church about what life was like as a bible translator. The Vicar and I can now only remember one thing we learnt that day (it was a few years ago, mind). We learnt about culture shock, and adjusting to living in a new culture.
The Wycliffe chap told us that there is a common pattern to the experience of the ‘foreigner’ moving to a new culture to live and work:
So we’re nearly six months into parish life and I confess that I’ve been having a few ‘I Hate Foreign’ moments lately. Our new church is lovely and friendly, but we don’t know folk all that well. The school has been helpful and welcoming, but our old friends know us better.
I know this time will pass and that soon we’ll feel completely at home here. But in the meantime it’s a good reminder to us that our real home is in heaven and that Christians are
aliens and strangers in the world (1 Peter 2v11)
Posted in Abroad, Faith, Malaysia | Tagged Abroad, culture shock, foreign, moving, new home, Wycliffe bible translators | 10 Comments »
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