Dear friends,

When I write this letter to you, we have only last week celebrated Easter. By the time you read this, we will have moved further away from Easter and will be looking to celebrating Pentecost. Both feasts are utterly connected: the Easter experience changes our lives completely, in fact gives us new life, the Pentecost experience sustains us in this new life. We cannot celebrate one without the other!

But the result of Easter and Pentecost is that there is work to be done. The message of the Risen Christ and the hope this brings needs to be proclaimed. And we are the ones who are charged to do that job! Now not all of us will be able to do that in the same way. Some will carry out the message through their care for the sick or the housebound, some will do that through the singing in the choir, and others will help in cleaning the church or doing the flowers. And some, of course, will do it through their ordained ministry.

That is how I came to you now almost 3 years ago. As a newly ordained deacon, as the fresh faced but inexperienced curate, ripe from the challenges of a teaching post and 3 years of theological training! I have enjoyed my time in Merton Park, a place so different from whence I came and so different from the Parish I shall be going to.

It hasn’t all been easy, but I have hopefully learnt and grown and want to thank you all for the things you have given me during my time here. It would be invidious to single out individuals but I want to pay particular thanks to a group of young people I worked with in preparing for confirmation who have continued meeting with me at my home under the guise of PCP – they are a bunch of cool people!

So now the time has come to move on. I shall be moving to become Team Vicar of the Parish of North Lambeth, which some of you probably visit daily as you go on the train to Waterloo. It is roughly a square bounded by the River, a line inland from Lambeth Bridge, a line inland from Vauxhall Bridge, and Kennington Road (nearest tube to my new home is Kennington!). It is a Parish of 3 churches including St Peters at Vauxhall, St Anselm at Kennington Cross, and St Mary at Lambeth (which is an LEP with the Methodist Church).

I shall be working with the Team Rector (Fr Angus) and the local Methodist Minister (Graham) with particular responsibilities for education, liturgy and music (I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to you). A move of jobs usually also means a new house, so Mike (my lodger) and I will be moving to a 3 bed-roomed Edwardian terrace in Wincott Street, Kennington sometime in June.

BUT I do want a chance to say proper goodbyes to you, so please come to church for my last service at St Mary’s as your curate on Trinity Sunday, 26 May 2002. After the service we shall have shared lunch – something which St Mary’s does so well! - in the hall to which all are invited.

My Licensing as Team Vicar in the Parish of North Lambeth will be on Wednesday 19 June 2002 at 8pm at the Church of St Peter, Vauxhall. The Bishop of Southwark will preside and it would be good to see friends from St Mary’s, Merton, to pray and celebrate me into my new job. The church is only 5 minutes walk from Vauxhall Station!

With my love and thanks for all you have done and meant to me

Wilma