Happy, surprisingly sunny, Friday!

It’s my first full week as a vicar and so this week is getting: 8.5/10!

I said a few weeks ago that I couldn’t bring myself to give a week in lockdown anything more than 7/10, but the restrictions have eased slightly which means that I’ve been able to speak to people from their front gardens, which is why this week gets an 8.5!

This week has involved lots of different things, including taking video clips, delivering puzzle books and flattening of many boxes!

On our day off last week I did one last bit of filming and had a chat to Helen and Andrew from Christ Church who were having a bike ride down the tow path at the bottom of the garden. Polly & Martin came to help us sort out the garden again, because they are wonderful!

Sunday involved the launch of my first online service at the Good Shepherd. Note to self: in the future, remember to edit out mistakes when you have left the camera rolling! We also watched my last service at Holy Trinity and St Michael’s. There really was no point putting on makeup that morning, I don’t know why I bothered!

Both of those services, the goodbye to the United Benefice and the hello to The Good Shepherd, were lovely but also really tough. This stuff is hard when you can’t speak to people face to face. Even now, I feel like I haven’t properly said goodbye to Formby, and certainly at the beginning of the week, my ministry over here felt very odd indeed. But as the week went on, things picked up somewhat.

On Monday I went for a look round church with Nathan. On Tuesday I spent most of my time unpacking yet more boxes. On Wednesday I went along to the Foodbank at the Good Shepherd and had such a great time. After a month of furlough and however many weeks of lockdown, it felt amazing to do something practical and people focused!

Yesterday and today I delivered puzzle books and news letters to the older people in my congregation. This has allowed me to drive around my parish a lot, get a feel of the place, start to learn road names, and most importantly meet some parishioners! I’ve had a chat to eleven people and also delivered packages to others. What a lovely lot they are!

One particularly special moment was when I was walking down the path to a house and before I could knock, the door was flung open and a lady said ‘You’re Poppy! How lovely to see you!’. I’ve had very few welcomes as lovely as that in my life!

I’ve also been able to start to get my head around all things parish by going through a memory stick left to me by the previous vicar. On Tuesday morning, when I had a ‘what am I doing?!’ panic, I opened up the files and heaved a sigh of relief. There’s so much info on there and I am really grateful to have a place to head to when I have questions!

I’ve also spent a lot of this week taking short videos for the This Time Tomorrow section in the Holy Trinity & St Michael’s service this Sunday. The idea is that people can give a snapshot of what their week looks like in little videos, so when it has been shown on the Holy Trinity Youtube channel, I will attempt to upload it onto my blog.

Anyway, I’ve now been here long enough to identify a weekly star. This week it’s Colin, who helps out at two foodbanks and a food pantry each week, and when Sandra and I were struggling to lift the family sized boxes full of tins on Wednesday, Colin was around to do the heavy lifting for us! What a star!

That’s it for me this week.

Much love 🙂