Dear Friends,

This email is arriving in your inbox a little earlier than normal as we have friends staying this weekend.

January often seems like a very long month, but for me this year it has flown by as I’ve spent much of it upside down in a long forgotten cupboard or with numerous trips to the charity shop – anyone want a wooden shaker style linen basket!? No matter how you have spent January 2022 we are nearly into February and celebrating with the Capel Christingle service.

Rev Liz has worked particularly hard on this service to make it suitable for adults as well as children. So it will be a celebration of Candlemas and the presentation of Christ at the temple. There will be Holy Communion to commemorate this but we will also make the traditional Christingles and the collection will be donated to Save the Children. Do come and join us. After the service we will be serving coffee and tea, but we would ask you to remain seated and we will bring this to you.

Our services for Sunday are therefore as follows:
9.30am Matins Ockley
10.30am Christingle with Holy communion Capel

Looking forward to March, St Peter’s Newdigate will be running a Lent course on Prayer. The Course is an opportunity to process life’s most painful questions. Using video followed by discussion each session is led by Pete Greig of 24/7 and stands alone. The course will take place online 8-9pm on a Monday evening from 7 March for 5 weeks. There is a poster attached which gives details of who to email if you would like to join in. Last year a number of the Newdigate congregation joined us for our Lent course on ‘Creation matters’, so it would be good to return the favour.

The photo this week is of the snowdrops at St John, Ockley’s graveyard, which Gill Christie was kind enough to show me this week – what a lovely quiet spot. I look forward to taking more pictures there as spring progresses.

With love and prayers

Debbie von Bergen
debbievonbergen@icloud.com
07774 784008

Readings-30.01.22.pdf

weekly-sheet-22.01.30.pdf

Lent-Course-2022-copy.pdf

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” Desmond Tutu In this issue we celebrate the life of the Rev Desmond Tutu with
tributes from church leaders and some of his best known quotation.  We have an article by Dr Herbert McGonigle which is the second in a series of words of encouragement in difficult times and we celebrate St Valentine’s day on 14th.  There is also an article on preparing for Lent:  We consider the disciplines of contemplation, prayer and self-assessment.

February-colour_2022.pdf

Dear Friends

It’s been a glorious week of sunshine with deep frost each morning – a walkers dream weather, where you need to keep moving to stay warm. My thermals and fleece lined walking trousers have certainly come in useful.

In between long walks I have been finishing the first draft of the church accounts for 2021. We have a PCC meeting on Monday evening at which I will be presenting them before they go to our independent examiner for her to check them over. Our Annual Parochial Church Meeting is on Sunday 3 April after the church service at Capel – everyone is invited to attend, but only those on the church electoral roll can vote, so if you would like to be added please contact me and I can pass you onto our Electoral Roll secretary.

This week we have the following services:
9.30am Holy Communion BCP St Margarets, Ockley Rev Liz Richardson
10.30am Morning Worship St John the Baptist, Capel Rev Jo Elvidge

Capel’s Christingle service will be held at 10.30am next Sunday (30th). This service will be for all ages and you will be handed a ‘make your own’ pack when you come into church. It has also been agreed that with the easing of restrictions we will again be able to serve coffee after the service.

For those who knew Peggy Barnett, John Ashwood has supplied details of her funeral which will be at Randalls Park Crematorium on 3 February at 12.30pm followed by the wake at Denbies. If you would like to go, please contact John on 07967 566372 jwoodash@gmail.com. It has been asked that you do a lateral flow test before attending and the family have requested ’no flowers’ but to wear something green.

You will have seen recently that the Community Fridge team have won an award for all their hardworking during the Covid crisis. They are however there whether we are in lockdown or not and anyone is welcome to come and see what fresh produce they have each week. They have four stops in Beare Green/Capel on a Friday afternoon:
12.15 Turner House Car park
13.00 Rickwood Park
13.45 Capel Memorial Hall
15.00 The Weald School
The food is free, you are just asked to make a donation if you can, and everyone is welcome. They love to save food from landfill!

The readings for this week are attached along with our weekly sheet which has a lot more information about church and village activities.

Lastly, photo of the week is a sunny picture of the tree at Leith Hill tower, long dead but making a lovely sculpture.

With love and prayers

Debbie von Bergen
debbievonbergen@icloud.com
07774 784008

Readings-23.01.22.pdf

weekly-sheet-22.01.23.pdf

Dear friends,

I can’t believe how quickly January seems to be speeding by, this week luckily we have had lovely crisp sunny weather, and we’ve done some wonderful walks enjoying the winter beauty all around us.

When I’m not outside walking or gardening (we have a lot of roses to prune) I have been continuing the decluttering we started about 18 months ago. This time the process has some urgency about it as we plan to put our house on the market in March. The trips to the recycling bins at the dump have become more frequent and I am delighted to hear that the Capel WI will once again be doing it’s jumble sale which is booked for 5 March. However there are some items that I’m hoping to find homes for locally, so if anyone would like a list of larger items that we will be disposing of that are in good condition do let me know.

This week we have the following services:
9.30am Matins at Ockley
10.30am Family Communion at Capel.

The weekly sheets are attached along with the readings for the week. There is a section on the weekly sheets showing some dates for your diary. One I would like to bring your attention to is the 19 March when we will be having our first working party to clear some ground in Capel churchyard to create a Remembrance garden for those who would like to have their ashes interred there. The idea is to have a lovely quiet space at the far left corner of the churchyard where the ashes can be buried, a plaque displayed on the wall, and where relatives and friends can sit and remember their loved ones. The working party will start at 9am with the aim of clearing the ground, so do come suitably dressed and with strimmers/secateurs. Coffee and cake will be provided.

Lastly, our photo of the week is St Margaret’s looking lovely in the winter sunshine this week.

With love and prayers

Debbie von Bergen
debbievonbergen@icloud.com
07774 784008

Readings-16.01.22.pdf

weekly-sheet-22.01.16.pdf

Dear friends,

Welcome to this week’s weekly sheets email on a rather miserable Saturday. None of us are at our best in this grey dark weather, we would all much rather have the bright cold sunshine of earlier in the week, but still it is January, a time for contemplation and indoor jobs. My job this week is to work on the church accounts ready for our first Standing Committee meeting on Monday. I quite enjoy it once a get going (I know, I need to get out more!), but I can procrastinate a lot before I start. In the end a deadline always spurs me on.

For those who haven’t been involved with how the church is run, we have a main committee called the Parochial Church Council (PCC for short) which meets 6 times a year and a Standing Committee which consists of the vicar, churchwardens, treasurers and 2 others from the PCC which meets on the months that the PCC doesn’t meet. It’s these two committees that oversee the running of the church. Once a year we have an Annual Parochial Church Meeting (APCM) to which everyone on the church electoral roll is invited. This normally happens in late March or April. It is at this meeting that the accounts are discussed and hopefully formally passed! Anyone can ask questions about them and once they are passed they are a public document and filed with the Charities Commission.

I’m sure many of you know this already, in fact many of you have served on the PCC over the years, and I was grateful to everyone who helped me when I first started as I had never been involved with church finances before. I have so enjoyed being part of the decision making body of our local church, it’s given me a much deeper insight into all the work the vicar and church wardens do.

Onto this week’s services, tomorrow we have the following:
9.30am. Holy Communion CW at Ockley
10.30am Cafe Church at Capel
The Cafe Church at Capel will look slightly different this month. We will still be serving coffee and croissants, but these will be brought to your seat in a pew, so that we socially distance as much as possible. Please do remember to wear your masks at all times apart from when you are eating/drinking.

Incidentally you will be pleased to hear that both our church services that were recorded over the Christmas period had more than 100 views. If you would like to see them do go to the link below:
www.capelandockleychurch.org.uk/2021/12/25/christmas-day-service-2021/

Last week I wrote about our bible groups that meet both weekly and monthly, this week I’d like to mention our prayer group that meets on Friday afternoons at 5pm in Capel Church. It’s a lovely way to start the weekend in the peace and quiet of the church, we say the daily prayers and pray for those who are in need. Do come if you would like to join us, we are there every Friday for about 30 minutes. Alternatively, do let us know if you would like a prayer said on your behalf for yourself or those you know.

Lastly, the photo of the week was taken on Holmbury hill on a very cold icy morning with the sun streaming down – a delight for all the senses!

With love and prayers

Debbie von Bergen
debbievonbergen@icloud.com
07774 784008

Readings-09.01.22.pdf

weekly-sheet-21.01.09.pdf

Dear Friends

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2022, I’m sure many of you are pleased to see the back of 2021, but there were good days in amongst the sad ones. We were lucky enough to watch our youngest granddaughter grow into the active toddler she is today and my eldest daughter, her husband and two children finally managed to sell their small two bedroom flat in Newham with no garden (lockdown was a challenge!), and move to the sunny space of Suffolk. They maybe technically homeless at the moment (they are living with her husband’s parents) but they love their new life and have just got their first dog.

I’m not a great one for new year’s resolutions, but I do always check in and think about things I would like to change if I can. I love that every day gives you a new beginning, so one can keep on starting over, not just on 1st January. This year I would like to spend more time reading my bible. I’ve followed a ‘read the bible in one year’ programme for a few years now, which is great, but doesn’t always give one the chance to look more deeply at some of the biblical mysteries. Our bible groups help with this as they look in more depth at various biblical books. This year I have also decided to read NT Wright’s relatively new book – ’The Autobiography of Paul’, his writings take up so much of the New Testament, so any chance to get to know his world better I feel is a good thing.

If you are looking to deepen your knowledge of the bible this year, do join one of our bible groups, the weekly one meets on Monday afternoons 3-5pm and the monthly one generally meets on a Monday evening at 7.30pm. just drop me an email and I’ll forward it to the relevant people.

This week’s services are as follows:

9.30am. Matins at Ockley
10.30am Family Communion at Capel
The answers to last weeks Christmas quiz are attached.

You will find the new copy of Inspire in our churches so do pick one up. This months issue has kindly been sponsored by Kindred Spirits who run the Pavilion Cafe in Ockley which is such a wonderful resource. Remember the cafe is open every Wednesday from 9.30am for coffee and cake. The last Wednesday of each month they also serve bacon butties!

This week we have two photos, the lovely Christmas scene at Ockley church, and the new front cover of Inspire

With love and prayers

Debbie von Bergen
debbievonbergen@icloud.com
07774 784008

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” In this issue we see in the New Year and celebrate Candlemas with our annual Christingle service on 30th January.  Plus we have a New Year Cafe church to look forward to on 9th January.

*As for the future….*
O my Father, my God, I am in Your hand;
and may I rejoice above all things in being so.
Do with me what seems good in Your sight;
only let me love you with all mind, soul and strength.

By John Wesley