Revd Rana Khan, Ministry Area Leader, hosted a Zoom meeting of our Ministry Team to discuss our ministry in this extraordinary situation of the coronavirus. The ministry team is committed to providing continuing ministry in the current situation, by making use of technology while we are not able to meet in the usual way.
Ministry Area News
Ministry Area Supper
Wednesday 6th November 2019, 7.00 pm for 7.30 pm
The Manor Hotel
Crickhowell
Join us for an evening of food and fellowship, followed by a presentation by Lord Lisvane KCB DL, former clerk to the house of commons and an entertaining commentator on Constitutional Matters
Tickets £20.00 each (includes two course supper and a glass of wine)
Tel. 01873 810648 for further details
Rogation Sunday 2019
The name Rogation Sunday comes from the Latin word meaning to ask for. On this Sunday each year the congregations of Crickhowell and Tretower are hosted by the people of Cwmdu. We go out into the churchyard and around the village, giving thanks and praise to God for his wonderful creation, and we pray for our fields and crops, the livestock and the people of our valley.
We didn’t venture into the fields this year as there were lots of lambs around, so we prayed at the gate for the livestock. They were bemused!
This service also includes licensing the church wardens and PCCs for all three churches.
Beaufort Male Voice Choir
On Friday 14th June at 7.30pm, the Beaufort Male Voice Choir will be performing at St Edmund’s Church, Crickhowell with special guest Katy Traherne, one of the founders of West End has Faith.
This promises to be a great concert! Tickets are £10, available from St Edmund’s Church or The Pantry.
Proceeds will go towards the roof repair fund.
Remembrance Sunday
Services of remembrance were held throughout the ministry area, Remembrance Sunday this year coinciding exactly with the centenary of the 1918 armistice. Rain swept down the Usk valley that morning, hitting Llangynidr first and later on, the ceremony at the war memorial in Crickhowell. This photograph by Andrew Nummelin perfectly captures the rainbow above the church of Ss Cynidr & Mary in Llangynidr.
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.Genesis 9:13
TearFund Big Quiz Night
Yesterday evening St Elli’s joined nearly 500 other churches and organisations and 24,000 people to put on Tear Fund’s Big Quiz Night. £307 was raised at St Elli’s for Tear Fund. Many thanks to everyone who made this event such a success.
A Pilgrimage Around Wales
Anne Hayward’s new book has been published and is available from booksellers including our own Book-ish in Crickhowell.
She has recorded an interview with Roy Noble on BBC Radio Wales which you can listen to here (starting at 1:18:20).
Here’s what the press release said about the book:
In 2015 Anne Hayward spent three months as a pilgrim, travelling on foot to visit some of Wales’ holiest sites and carrying everything she needed to camp along the route. Her main objectives were four ancient places of pilgrimage – Holywell, Bardsey Island, St David’s and Llantwit Major – but she also visited numerous churches and other places of interest along the way.
In A Pilgrimage Around Wales she gives some of the history of those ancient places of pilgrimage and reflects on the spiritual experience of being a modern-day pilgrim. ‘I was very fortunate – ‘blessed’ is a more apt word, perhaps – to have been able to take time out of ordinary life in the spring and summer of 2015 to go on a pilgrimage around Wales. This book is a fruit of that pilgrimage,’ explained Anne.
‘Being on foot, and carrying quite a heavy pack for a small(ish) woman, was both liberating and constraining,’ said Anne, ‘What became increasingly clear during those three months was that my research prior to my walk had left me unprepared for the sheer joy of quietly discovering new places and the enormous sense of achievement that I felt each day. Often what was most overwhelming was the beauty of the ordinariness of many of my days.’
In the book, she also meditates upon the significant conversations she found herself sharing with the strangers she met along her path.
‘The subtitle of this book is In Search of a Significant Conversation, and its contents cause us to appreciate the conversations, random or otherwise, which peppered the author’s pilgrimage around Wales,’ said the Most Reverend John D E Davies, Bishop of Swansea & Brecon and the Archbishop of Wales. ‘Unspoken or spoken, those conversations bring the places to life, and illuminate the faith which motivated the journey.’
‘“Camping here is my gift to you,” said one campsite owner to Anne on her tremendous pilgrimage, and this book is a real gift to us, with Anne’s thoughts reminding us of the vast riches we have in Wales in so many ways’ added the Revd Canon Ian Rees, Rector of Central Swansea.
Anne Hayward read History at Oxford University and went on to become a secondary school teacher. Over the last few years, she has walked thousands of miles to places of pilgrimage in Wales, Ireland, Brittany and England. She is a Reader in the Church in Wales and is involved as a licensed Lay Minister in her local church and the wider area. She lives in the Brecon Beacons, and has written articles for various local magazines and newspapers.
More Mission Pictures
Mission in Crickhowell, Wales 2018
The Lee Abbey team that went on mission to Crickhowell, Wales returned last week. Check out the following video (thanks to Rend Collective for the music!) to get some snapshots of the experience and click the link below to read more about the trip.leeabbeydevon.org.uk/2018/05/mission-in-crickhowell-wales
Posted by Lee Abbey Devon on Monday, 28 May 2018
More pictures on Lee Abbey’s blog page.
Mission Together 2018
It’s been a fabulous ten days and the weather could not have been better. The churches in the Ministry Area came together for a family ceilidh on the first Saturday, a huge success with many people coming in from the town and further afield. The Lee Abbey team joined us for Open the Book, with the launch of Prayer Spaces in Schools and at a wedding party at Llanbedr School, making contact with over 600 children in our Ministry Area. We’ve been out on the streets in Brynmawr, we’ve spent time with care home residents making them feel special for the Royal Wedding, and we had our own event in the Market Hall with the wedding live-streamed onto a big screen.
Check out the photos on our Mission page
Huge thanks to the Lee Abbey team, and to all who got involved. Job done? Mission accomplished? Not yet! This is only the start…
Mission Briefing 9
Ascension to Pentecost, Ten Days of Prayer and Mission
A great deal of planning has gone into the preparation of the services and events which will take place across our Ministry Area in the next couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who has offered support, prayers and practical help to the teams involved, both here, and in Lee Abbey.
Ascension Day Service, 7.00pm St. Mary’s Brynmawr
We are delighted that the Archbishop will be preaching and presiding at this service to kick off the Mission and help us to welcome our guests from Devon. Everyone is very welcome to attend this service, where the Mission will be launched, and the Ministry Area Council and Teams will be commissioned.
Please pray for the final preparations of both teams, for safe travels for the Lee Abbey visitors, for warm welcomes, for generous sharing of our gifts and love, and that many will be reached by our projects and prayers.