ANGLICAN
CHAPLAINCY
NEWSLETTER
Spring
2007
Services
From
Easter to the end of June
15 April Second Sunday of Easter10.30 Eucharist
22 April Third Sunday of Easter10.30 Eucharist
29 April Fourth Sunday of Easter10.30 Eucharist
6 May Fifth Sunday of Easter
9.40 Holy Communion (Book of Common
Prayer)
10.30 All-age worship with Eucharist
13 May Sixth Sunday of Easter 10.30 Eucharist
17 May Ascension Day 9 am Eucharist at 2 Quai Mathiss, followed by breakfast
19th -20 May Liebfrauenberg
Sleepover;
20 May Seventh Sunday of Easter 10.30 Eucharist
27 May Pentecost (Whit Sunday) 10.30 Eucharist
3 June Trinity Sunday
9.40 Holy Communion (Book of Common
Prayer)
10.30 Eucharist
10 June First Sunday after Trinity 10.30 Eucharist
17 June Second Sunday after Trinity 10.30 Eucharist
24 June Third Sunday after Trinity 10.30 All-age worship for St Alban, with Eucharist. Sunday School prize giving
Extracts from the Annual
Report
of the Priest-in-Charge
It is now almost a year since I was instituted as
Priest-in-Charge of this Chaplaincy, so this is an appropriate moment to review
how things are going. The first thing I want to say is how very much both Diane
and I are enjoying our new role in the Chaplaincy. This is primarily because
you are such a wonderful congregation to work for: you are fascinatingly
diverse, you are united by a true sense of Christian fellowship, and you have
made us feel very much appreciated. It has been wonderful to have the freedom
to concentrate on my ministry in the Church...
The centre of our Christian life together is, as it
should be, our Sunday worship. I don’t look for any great changes here, though
I am keen for us to have more variety of music and more people leading
intercessions. Occasional all-age worship enables us to make greater use of the
excellent liturgical material that is available these days. The monthly
Communion service according to the 1662 Prayer Book may be a minority taste,
but it is what many of us were brought up on and the small but growing 9.40
congregation is now an established part of our church life. There is daily
Morning Prayer. which is not only central to my own spiritual life, but also
attended by a few members of the congregation. I would encourage others to try
it out when your daily routine permits.
One of the great joys of the past year has been
getting to know you better. I have visited quite a lot of people in their homes
and am keen to continue this. If you would appreciate a visit and some time to
talk, just tell me.
One of the great privileges of priestly ministry is
being called on to accompany people through crises of various kinds and through
the important moments of their lives. Baptisms, weddings and funerals don’t
crop up that often in our community but often bring us into contact with people
who otherwise have little or no connection with the Church.
Now let me touch briefly on some of our other
activities. Looking first at our work with young people, the Sunday School is
well run by an enthusiastic team of teachers but we could do with attracting
more children. …We had a good confirmation group and a very happy (even if
delayed!) Confirmation service when the Bishop came last October. We need now
to find ways of continuing to engage those young people with the Christian
faith and the life of the Church.
A priority is to encourage the development of home
meetings of various kinds: for prayer, bible study, music, learning and worship,
not to mention fellowship and fun….
It’s also very beneficial to the life of any church
to provide opportunities for getting away together from time to time. The
annual Liebfrauenberg weekend, which took place a week ago, continues to be an
important event for us, and that the more informal Liebfrauenberg “sleepover”
has also become a regular fixture. Moreover, we shall have another retreat at
the “Air et Vie” Centre, beautifully situated near Marmoutier, the weekend
after Easter.
Let me now turn briefly to some of our more
outward-looking activities. First, we are committed to giving the equivalent of
10% of our income to causes outside ourselves. The One World Group looks for
suitable objects for our giving and makes carefully thought out proposals.
Next, the Chaplaincy Council has agreed that I
should maintain the practice that the Chaplain in
The Anglican Church is a tiny minority on the
continent of
A few thoughts about the future. We are still a long way from our goal of
being able to pay for a full time stipendiary Chaplain. However, I don’t want
our strategic thinking to be overly dominated by financial considerations,
important though they are.
During this year, I’ve structured my thinking
around the two axes of broadening and deepening. By broadening,
I mean that we need to grow, simply because Jesus Christ is good news for
everyone, not just for the few who already come to church. So it’s vital to
find ways of broadening our reach.
By deepening, I mean all the ways in which we
learn more about our faith and move forward in our spiritual lives. This is
more to do with our internal life as a Christian community, but it’s very much
connected with broadening too because it’s only if they see that our Christian
life has some depth and vitality that people will find it worth investigating
further.
I’ve identified a number of areas where we need to
develop our church life more. I’m very conscious, however, (a) that I cannot do
everything that needs to be done, and (b) that I ought not to try. I want to
encourage everyone to think what they might be able to do in order to develop
some of our underdeveloped areas. I will support any good initiative coming
from you... As we have said before, our watchword should be “Do a few
things, and do them well.
Prawns and Paludisme
Miranda Whitten
Few visitors to Africa arrive with the hope of
finding lots of malarious children. Nor do they generally bother smuggling
mosquito eggs into the continent. But we were on a rather specialist quest. Our
diminuitive research party of two, comprising my colleague Martine and myself,
had come to Cameroon to test the immune responses of mosquitoes to malaria
infection.
This work was an extension of our research in
Strasbourg, where we look for genes that control mosquito immunity. Why is this
important? Malaria is increasingly drug-resistant, mosquitoes are ever more
pesticide-resistant, and there is presently no effective vaccine. Malaria kills
a million people a year, mostly infants, and it’s heading our way too, if we
are to believe the climate-change hype. There are many potential strategies for
fighting malaria, but our particular goal is to stop mosquitoes passing the
disease to humans. To do this, we must first understand how a mosquito’s body
is affected by, and how it responds to, the malaria parasite. There is no
better place to work with human cerebral malaria, than in Africa.
Arriving at night in the capital Yaoundé, my first
impression of Cameroon was the smell of wood-smoke hanging thick in the moist
air, mingling with barbecued fish and wisps of frangipani, underscored by a fug
of diesel fumes and the hums, chirps and pulsations of unseen insects. We were
pretty exhausted after the journey, but our host lab, the IRD (Institute for
Research & Development) arranged a little party for us and we soon felt
very welcome and relaxed into the Cameroonian pace of life.
We rapidly developed our own daily routine. It
began with a hazy dawn, before the fruit bats had returned to roost or the surrounding
mountains had appeared through the mist. We would awake with the Muslim call to prayer, or to the sound of red
dust being swept with palm fronds, or cascades of jogging, singing youths
passing our flat as a kind of mobile choir practice (they even had percussion
accompaniment as they pattered off down the hill). Then, our walk to the lab as
local celebrities (“Salut les blanches!” shouted the street vendors), an
exchange of smiles and coffee with our new lab mates, and then down to the
serious business of mosquito injections, trips to village schools, infections
and dissections.
To experimentally infect mosquitoes, we needed the
blood of children with malaria. So, when we weren’t fiddling about with
mosquitoes in the IRD lab, we were out in the field screening village
schoolchildren for malaria. I was impressed by the efforts of the teachers to
engage such huge class sizes (100 or more children). Our reception was invariably one of joyful hysteria.
Most of the kids seemed to regard a new toothbrush and tube of toothpaste as an
excellent trade for a drop of blood. However, their bravado waned somewhat as
they stood in line for the finger prick! We eventually became known as the
notorious “Piqûre-Piqûre” doctors.
After
all the blood smears had been checked for parasites, the infected children were
brought to the lab, where they donated about 30 millilitres of blood in
exchange for free malaria drugs and a mosquito net. The parents came too, and
were taught the basics of malaria transmission and prevention. These kids were
charming and very cute: I, however, felt like a guilty vampire and winced every
time I heard a child shrieking at the sight of a needle. The good thing is that
since this blood-for-drugs scheme has been running, there’s been a large drop
in malaria cases in the surrounding countryside. Finally, our greedy mosquitoes
would be dissected to discover how many parasites had survived the journey.
Dissecting was uncomfortable for everyone: the mosquito “body parts” attracted little whirlygig ants
that ran jerky zig-zagging raiding parties up and down our arms while we sat at
the microscopes. In fact our first experiment was a disaster because all the
mosquitoes were carried off by these annoying micro-kidnappers!
Other IRD scientists were running projects to test
non-African mosquito species for their ability to transmit malaria. As the pace
of climate change increases, so too does the risk of malaria extending its
range into Europe. One day a shipment arrived containing hundreds of mosquitoes
from the Camargue region of Southern France, buzzing hungrily in their tiny
cotton-plugged transport tubes. Fortunately, these mosquitoes proved to be
incapable of transmitting malaria: it seems they didn’t like the taste of human
blood (what a disappointing journey it must have been for them). Nevertheless,
I found the necessity for such experiments a rather chilling sign of the times.
We
worked hard, but there was also a little time to explore. Martine was a great
companion and we got to know each other so much better even though we had
already worked together in
The
food deserves special mention. Miles of grill stalls thronged the streets,
selling fresh and delectable goodies from termites to mackerel (which must be
eaten with the fingers to be fully appreciated), batons of manioc wrapped in
banana leaves with fiery sauces, cow entrails
and amazingly good prawns. In fact, Cameroon
was christened by 15th century Portugese sailors, who were so impressed with the bounty of delicious
prawns in the Gulf of Guinea that they called the country Rio dos Camarões
or River of Prawns.
I could, but won’t, fill
pages describing the crushing problems that Cameroon faces, in common with so
many other African nations. The more lasting impression for me was not so much
the poverty or the AIDS tragedies, but rather the ability of the Cameroonians
to confront their problems with strength and optimism, and to distill out the
positive and the fun from almost every precious life experience. It was easy to
make friends with these people and I only wish I’d had more time to spend with
them. .As for our experiments well, it’s too early to say. We had some big
surprises and don’t yet really understand what, if anything, it all means.
That’s science for you.
Mary Slessor of
Calabra
The
Anglican Church honours Mary Slessor (1848 -1915) a
Scotswoman and a Presbyterian on 11 January. She came from a very simple
background and from the age of eleven worked for twelve hours a day in the
textile mills in Dundee, attended night school and bible study in the evening
and against all odds became a missionary to the Calabar in Nigeria, fulfilling
a cherished dream.
Mary
shocked many missionaries by living with and as the local people with whom she
was working. She is even reputed to have hit one chief over the head with her
umbrella. She fought bravely against some of ills of the culture. At that time
it was considered that twins were cursed and that the mother had been visited
by an evil spirit. Consequently the babies were often killed. Mary worked hard
to save those babies.
She
learned to speak Efik
fluently and became practised in the local customs and culture, thus assisting
her missionary work While her insistence upon working by
herself brought her into conflict with authorities, her close understanding of
the Nigerians led the local Governor to appoint her as a magistrate on the Itu
court. She received the Order of St John of Jerusalem in 1913 and when she died
in 1915 she was given a full state funeral in Nigeria.
Rufus
Folarami sent us the following article from an Nigerian newspaper on a festival
for twins in that country where Mary is still honoured.
Twins Carnival:
Hundreds of twins converge in Ilorin
to mark their uniqueness.
With
the celebration of the first Twins Festival in Ilorin Kwara State, Mary
Slessor, the Matriarch who stopped the killing of twins came alive. More than
500 sets of twins in and outside Kwara State participated in the maiden
festival. They include children, youths and elderly twins. The event took place
amidst fanfare at the Amusement Park in Unity area of Ilorin. Slessor's memory
coming alive was demonstrated in the plan of Twins Action Aid International
(TAAI) to build a Twin Training Centre (TTC) in Ilorin, Kwara State. The
Project Coordinator,Taiwo Oluwafunsho told Daily Sun
that TAAI decided to immortalise Slessor through this centre, because if not
for her efforts, up to 10.6 million twins in Africa today would not be in
existence.
"The
centre would build a mighty edifice. One prominent thing about it is that we
would immortalise Mary Slessor. She is seen as the mother of all twins. If she
did not stop the killing of twins, perhaps today my brother and I, with other
twins, would not be alive. … With the statistics I have out of about 700
million people in Africa, 10.6 million are twins. In fact, her gesture favoured
Nigerian twins more [as° 55 per cent of African twins are concentrated in
Nigeria.'' In addition to the centre, the twin said TAAI, which was formed 12
years ago, is planning to build a Global Twins Village. In this village twins
from all over the world would have opportunity of coming together.
Lamenting
the poor treatment to twins in Nigeria and Africa, he said that is what TAAI
has been fighting since it came on board. He added that the essence of the
festival in Kwara was to further consolidate the United Nations proposition.
"Though Mary
Slessor stopped the killing of twins, situations that are still terrible face
twins. Many of them are sent to beg in the streets"
It
is as a result of these unfortunate situations that we formed TAAI. Then the
festival is in conformity with the UNESCO's culture of peace. It is also aimed
at promoting tourism in Kwara, the venue of the event. “Since we came up with
TAAI, we have created forum for twins to come together and discuss the problems
affecting them. We have assisted many twins from poor homes to be independent.
"We initiated live savings that is equivalent to micro trading activities
for the poor twins. As I am talking to you now, we have 2, 000 members. We have
rehabilitated 35 mothers of twins. We have brought back fathers of twins who
abandoned the twins and their mothers”, he said.
Meanwhile,
a lot of events added colour to the festival. They include Most Identical Twins
Competition, traditional Oriki Ibeji dance, musical performance, launch of
twins mothers saving and loans scheme programme, twin group photograph, among
others. Unfortunately Toyin Saraki, the
first lady of Kwara State who is the mother of twins, Teniola and Teniayo,
did not come to the event with the twins.
The
Daily Sun spoke to 86-year-old Omomeji Malik, the eldest twin in the event who
possibly may be the eldest twin in Kwara. Through her 60-year-old daughter,
Alhaja Juwerat Adebayo, the octogenarian told the sad story of how Kehinde, her
twin sister fell inside a fire when they were only about seven months old.
"Our mother told me the story of my late twin sister. She said we have not
started walking. We were crawling. My sister crawled into fire. She could not
be saved. The fire had razed her terribly. This was 86 years ago. It was sad to
me, but I have learnt to live with it, but each time I am in the midst of twins
like in this situation, I feel it.
Women's World Day of Prayer
Some
twenty years ago about ten women from this Chaplaincy met together to hold a
simple service in English on Women's World Day of Prayer. Although there are
always services in French and German in Strasbourg on this day; there has not
until now been another service in English. This year women form the
International Church in Strasbourg and our Chaplaincy planned an English
service. Some twenty women with links to at least ten different countries were
present.
The
service for the day is prepared each year by women form a different country and
then translated into a multitude of languages and slightly adapted as regards
the music. Our thanks go especially to Katherine Parsons who was responsible
for the music - there was a lot of it
Thank
you too to Nick Rivier and John Murray who very competently ran the crèche!
United Under God’s Tent
This
is the sermon which Carol Simpson, Minister of the International Church
preached.
Each
year, Christian women all around the world gather on the first Friday of March
for a simple worship service of prayer and reflection on a chosen theme. Responsibility for planning the service
rotates among participating countries and provides a wonderful opportunity for
us to learn something about the history and culture of a land we may have never
visited. The service is designed to be
highly participatory in order to encourage women to discover and to use their
gifts and talents. A special thanks to
all who have participated today.
We
might begin today by asking, “Why a Women’s World Day of Prayer?” Well why not?
What better way for us to support one another? What better way to raise the consciousness of
others about the plight of our sisters in Christ who labor in fields and
factories in unimaginable conditions?
What better way express our solidarity and to offer hope? This Day of Prayer begins as dawn breaks over
the islands of Tonga in the Pacific and continues across each continent like a
giant wave, until the last Services of this special day are held back in the
Pacific, on the islands of Samoa....circling the world in prayer for about thirty-six
hours. While we are praying for our
sisters in distant lands, they also are praying for us.
The
chosen theme for today’s service: United Under God’s Tent...offers a marvelous
image on which to base our reflections.
A tent is a gathering place, a place which offers shelter, sometimes
even a place of refuge. In our reading
from Genesis, we note that Abraham and Sarah were in their tent by the oaks of
Mamre, Abraham sitting at the entrance, staring off into the distance. Suddenly aware that a group of strangers is
approaching, he gets up and runs toward them.
Despite the fact that he was an old man, and perhaps due some deference
because of his age, he bows before these three men and offers them hospitality:
water to wash their dusty feet, the shade of his oak trees to escape the heat
of the day, and some bread to sustain them for their journey.
Abraham
is demonstrating typical desert hospitality...which dictated that if a stranger
came near, one should offer water, shelter and food. But Abraham does much more than the minimum
required by local custom. He orders
Sarah to quickly bake some cakes, orders a young calf to be prepared and milk
to be brought....actually it sounds as if the strangers are going to stay for
quite a few hours while this feast is being prepared.
But
as is often the case, there is more to this story than meets the eye. One of the guests asks where Sarah is (have
you ever wondered how he knew her name?), and when told that she is in the
tent, he says.... ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife
Sarah shall have a son.’
Now
Sarah, dutiful wife that she is, busily preparing a feast for these guests, is
also curious so she is eavesdropping a bit on this conversation. When she hears the stranger indicate that she
will bear a son, she outright chuckles....thinking to herself, ‘After I have
grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ And then we read that
“The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, “Shall I indeed bear
a child, now that I am old?” Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?’”
And
that is the crux of this story....Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Is there anything which the Lord cannot
accomplish? It is important to remember
that God had long ago promised to Abram and Sarai descendants more numerous
than the stars in the skies.... But it’s easy to get discouraged, to let doubt
creep in when time drags on and it appears that God may have forgotten his
promises.....This scripture undoubtedly carries a powerful message for the
women of Paraguay, who have lived through decades of civil war and unrest, and
who still today often live in deplorable conditions. There is comfort and hope in God’s promises
and in this text which reminds us to wait patiently on the Lord and to trust in
the Lord’s desire to provide for all our needs.
God is as extravagant and generous in his love for us as Abraham was in
his hospitality to those strangers.
But
let us return for a moment to the image of the tent. The tent can be a gathering place, much as
this sanctuary is a gathering place for us today. Paul emphasized unity in his letter to the
Ephesians and urges us to focus on the things which unite rather than divide. Just look around you this morning. We have gathered here, women from many
different countries, women speaking many different native tongues, women from
many walks of life, women with little education and women with multiple
graduate degrees, women who are married and single, or single again, women who
are rich and women who are poor, women from a wide variety of faith
traditions....What is it that brings us together this morning?
Listen
to Paul’s words once again: “I ... beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling
to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you
were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
Far
too often we humans focus on things which divide. We accentuate our differences and seem to
delight in attaching labels. This
worship service is the result of the combined efforts of two local churches,
the Anglican Chaplaincy and The International Church of Strasbourg. We have our differences, different worship
traditions, different worship practices, and even some theological differences,
but we nonetheless celebrate our unity.
We gather here this morning, a group of individuals who have followed
many different paths....We are Anglican, Episcopalian, Church of Scotland,
Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist...and undoubtedly a host of other
traditions as well. But the bottom line
is: We are one in Christ Jesus. We worship one God, claim Jesus Christ as our
Lord and Saviour, and seek to use the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the mission and
ministry to which we are each called. We have recognized that we can do more
for God by occasionally pooling our talents than we can possibly do separately.
Moments
ago we sang, “Bind us together, Lord together, O bind us together with
love.” It is love which ultimately binds
us together.....Love of God, love of Christ, and love of the Holy Spirit. And it is God’s love for us which enables us
not to overlook our differences but instead to celebrate them. We are called, each of us. We are equipped, each of us for different
tasks. We are called to use our gifts in
service to God and to others. And we are
called to pray for one another. We are
United Under God’s Tent with women around the world. We Are United Under God’s Tent as we lift our
voices in prayer, blending them together as one single voice, praising God,
giving thanks for God’s blessings, and celebrating God’s promises. Amen.
The
Paraguayan women make a beautiful Nanduti lace, which is made up of different
designs, each with its own distinctive pattern.
These are then skilfully joined together to form one beautiful
whole. There are no divisions, no
apparent seams, just beauty and loveliness crafted from diversity. The lace reminds us of God’s will that there
should be unity in the Church. We are
all different – in this sanctuary this morning there is diversity of culture,
language, nationality, talent and ability – but we are all created in the image
of God, all gifted by the Holy Spirit.
When we live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we live in harmony and
unity despite our differences.
Despite
hardship and problems, despite vast differences and distances which separate
us, we unite with the women of Paraguay and with women all around the world
this morning....as we work together and pray together, joined and supported by
love, we are “United Under God’s Tent.”
Liebfrauenberg 2007
Some
forty-five people from Strasbourg, Heidelberg Karlsruhe and the Stuttgart area
met together for the annual Spring weekend. All the
cherished elements were there the wonderful countryside, meeting friends, the
usual tarte flambé and moonlight walk back home plus some perfect sunny
weather.
The
weekend was lead by the Reverend Graham Claydon. He set out to describe how the
Church had in recent years rediscovered its healing vocation He described the varied
ways in which the different sections of the Church were answering this
challenge. It was stressed that healing
did not necessary mean curing, although most healers had experience of people
recovering completely from illness after they had received the laying on of
hands. Healing related to being made whole. .Many of the medical profession are
now encouraging a more holistic approach to health and healing. At the Sunday eucharist those who so desired
it received the laying on of hands at a healing ceremony.
In
one session Graham movingly described how he himself had been restored to health after a breakdown
several years previously.
It
was a good weekend - there is however just one thing The Liebfrauenberg
weekends began over thirty years ago and were seen as family weekends but now
there are very few children there. For many of us the children have grown and gone, but it
would be very good if other young families could now think of coming.
ONE WORLD GROUP
At
our last meeting of the One World Group it was discovered that some of those
present were unaware of the substantial effort that the Chaplaincy makes
towards outward giving so …….
It
was decided early in the Chaplaincy life that as a community we should aim to
give a sum equivalent to 10% of our income in outward giving. As this is a gift
from the whole community EVERYONE can make proposals and suggestions. The One
World Group which exists for this purpose is again open to EVERYBODY and meets
twice or three times a year to discuss proposals and make firm recommendations
to the Chaplaincy Council. Some people
come once and then there are those six or seven stalwarts who turn up every
time.
Not
all our funding goes outside of France. We also help two local organisations
CIMADE and CASAS which work with migrants and asylum seekers. In order to help
the community understand the mission of these two organisations, Michel Weckel
the administrator of CIMADE; gave a sermon/talk on this body at a service in
July 2006. Lionel Hilaire produced an article for the last newsletter on CASAS.
A
sum is also given to the Chaplain for a discretionary fund which allows him
sometimes to help those in genuine need or to make a small loan to tide someone
over a difficult patch.
A FEW FACTS ABOUT CIMADE
Cimade was founded in 1939 to
work among those who had been evacuated from Alsace and Lorraine at the
beginning of the Second World War. It has kept its original name "Comité
Inter Mouvements Auprès des Evacués", although its mission has changed over
the years towards meeting the needs of other groups in difficulty.
During the Second World War
it also worked to help Jews threatened by the Nazis and then worked for
Franco-German reconciliation after the Second World War. In the 1950s it was
involved in the upheavals accompanying the movement towards independence in the
former French territories in North Africa
Today one of its essential
tasks is to welcome, advise and defend those faced with administrative difficulties
Every year.thousands of foreigners turn to CIMADE, not only for judicial or
administrative help but also for a sympathetic listener in situations where so
many doors are closed.
Refugees, asylum seekers,
those without papers are all looking for the right to live in peace and have
the proper legal status. CIMADE welcomes and advises these people, firmly
convinced that defending one single case is a way of defending the rights of
everyone in that situation.
Under the terms of a
convention concluded with the Minister of Social Affairs, Cimade has the
authoritiy to visit regularly the
centres of retention where people who are being deported are confined..By means
of these regular visits, rapid action in urgent situations and the building up
of a body of information, the Cimade teams help to ensure that the dignity and
rights of those confined are respected.
Cimade also has
projects for those who have their papers and for statutory refugees who have
the right of asylum. It helps these groups with the necessary formalities and
their language and employment problems. It arranges French courses and
participates in the organisation of educational activities set up for
foreigners.
AUCTION OF PROMISES
Remember the very successful auction of
promises we held last year. A lot of people have not yet claimed the
various services they bought then. Before we organise a new auction of promises
in the autumn we encourage you to claim any promises you bought last time. The Chaplaincy Council
decided to set the end of June 2007 as the deadline for claiming
promises After this date those who offered services of one kind or another will
be considered freed from their obligations if the promise has not been claimed.