At Little Burstead and the Advent Carol service

This morning I was running the service at St. Mary the Virgin, Little Burstead.  My sermon is here.  Many of the regulars had decided not to attend, so that they could go to Emmanuel where one of their number was renewing his Baptism vows (by immersion).  As an aside why is it now 'full immersion', you are either immersed, or you aren't).  Still, there were enough to make a worthwhile congregation and it allowed me to be a little more interactive than usual, so the text (if you read it) will be what I intended to say, which is a good approximation of what I actually said. I still find preaching uses a lot more energy than I think it should, and was asleep in front of the TV minutes after lunch!

Which made me later at Christ Church than I should have been.  I walked to church and was quite wet on arrival.  This afternoon I upgraded the 3 PCs in the church office to AVG 9, and I'm pleased to report that it was a straight forward simple process.  The firewall also works on the default settings - which is a relief.  The 8.5 version had to be switched off to allow just one person to use the main printer!

The upgrade finished JUST in time for me to get to the carol service.  I entered the church from the foyer one minute before the service started.  It was not as packed as last year, but it was well attended.  The service looked mainly at the events before the birth and was centred around 'three visits of an angel'.  Various groups contributed decorations to out giant Christmas tree, there was a school choir singing Little Donkey, and the dance group performed.  Then it was into the hall for mulled Chilean fair-trade black currant juice - but it wasn't the mouthful that description might make it sound. 

Then back home to check on the progress of the weekend's work (at work) and to blog