Despite Covid 9 restrictions we have been able to hold our annual garden party on a reduced scale in Brenda Ross’s garden – in glorious weather on August 2 this year, after our monthly Holy Communion service, also held in the garden with effective social distancing in place.

We restricted numbers to 24 this year. We had a record church attendance and collection in ten garden. We had a very enjoyable lunch, served and not buffet style as required by current regulations.

Once more Brenda lent her garden – and ensured her gardener had cut the grass which was a good rich green thanks to recent rain. We had good weather and a good turnout. Pimms was drunk. Food was eaten and enjoyed. People mixed. Just as we were taking the tables and tents down it clouded over ominously and we just managed to finish as the rain came down heavily. Another successful event – thanks to Brenda and her helpers.

Bishop Robert, the Bishop of Europe, came to Barcelona before the diocesan synod to take the Sunday service and to confirm any adults who wished to be confirmed. As we are  now part of St Goerge’s Barcelona, we were asked if any of our would like to be confirmed. So Janet Humphreys and John Pinnell set out to be confirmed by Bishop Robert in Barcelona. They went down with Bishop Jorge (see previous post) who had been visiting Andorra and with Brnda Ross who came as witness of the confirmation service.

This was a very special service as rarely does the bishop pass through Barcelona and a number adults took advantage of this opportunity to be confirmed.

Bishp Jorge, the Bishop of Peru, came to Barcelona to visit Deborah and John Chapman and it was decided that he should also see Andorra. So on Friday he came up by bus and stayed with Elsa & Michael Derham and was taken around, including a trip to caldea with Brenda Ross. We then held a short eucharistic service with him in the afternoon and on Sunday drove him back down to Barcelona where some of us joined in the service there – a very special service (see next post)

Sunday August 13 had us fill Brenda Ross’s garden with some 50 adults and four well behaved children for the 2017 edition of our garden party. Revd Deborah Chapman, who had come to lead our Holy Communion service, opened the party with grace, and her husband, Revd John Chapman arrived post haste from having celebrated the 11.00 service in St George’s Barcelona to say a few words about the link we now have in place between the two churches and his responsibilities as chaplain for both. Lots of spit roast chicken and oven baked salmon was eaten along with a large variety of salads brought by visitors. The equally large selection of desserts was simply demolished. All this was washed down with Pimms, wine and soft drinks in equal quantities. It seems that a very good time was had by all and Deborah and John met a new set of faces in Andorra. We will not forget that four adults (and two children) traveled up from Barcelona to join us for this annual event. Our thanks to Brenda for hosting us and for all the work she put in to make this possible.

By now we should have been used to this – Brenda’s garden simply filled up. A week before the event we had very few people booked in. The day before we were scratching around to find more chairs we had so many extra visitors. Revd Roy Greenwood had given us an excellent uplifting sermon and service and we retired to Brenda’s garden where the positive mood was reinforced by good weather, good company, more than one glass of Pimms and plenty of good food. Definitely a positive contribution by the church to the community!

The new site format is simply (and boot so simply) an update of the first version of this site on this vehicle – which went live almost four years ago.

What is important is what is behind the site – more controls over access to it. We now have some security software and what is really worrying is that already this has detected one persistent person – somebody using the log in user name of an administrator and trying 18 times to get into the site.

We have nothing on this site of value to a hacker – not even a lot of visitor details. But we have a hacker! Still.

It was back in early March that I was first locked out of ten site when I went to update the events section. It took me almost the rest of the month to discover that the site had been hacked and shut down as a preventative measure by our hosting service.

Then I found that they had also effectively “destroyed” the site and was looking to start again from scratch – but the guy who originally helped set up the site turned out to be running a back up copy and with stoops and starts we where able to get the site back, updated to a newer version of the site software – and now go live.

So – let’s hope for a long life this time round!