It is now six weeks since we left Sheffield after 14 years living and working in the inner city. But I need to re wind to Palm Sunday and Easter Day before I start on living in Banbury. On Palm Sunday I shared in my final service at St Peters LEP Ellesmere. It was a wonderful time with a delicious buffet that followed. The warmth of a community that I have increasingly grown to love and care about was very tangible. I will miss people and leading worship in their great worship space. The pleasure was added to a couple of weeks later when Jill and I joined Bill at his 100 birthday party and to be invited to say a few words was a genuine privilege. There will always be a special place in my memory of St Peters, a community that welcomed and accepted everyone without placing demands upon them. They really are Christ like. Rosie , Jean and team went to a lot of trouble to make it a wonderful time. Then Easter Day saw my final service in Sheffield and it was everything I could have hoped
Everyone says it and it's true "where have all those years gone?" So we decided we should celebrate 40 years. As it rained on our wedding day and only briefly stopped as we came out of church, we hoped we would get a dry day otherwise where would everyone go? We became obsessed with checking the weather forecast which in true British fashion kept changing right up to the finally day. So we managed to get two awnings to play safe. Thankfully we had a dry and sunny day so everyone could sit under shade or wander around the garden. We had a lovely cake which one of our daughters had arranged to be made. The cake like all the food we prepared needed to be Gluten Free, so our grandchildren and son in laws, who have been diagnosed Coeliac had no worries about what they could eat. No one knew at all. It was so lovely, if somewhat challenging, to invite friends from all around the country to share the day. We were just so delighted that folk came considering it was in the summe
Our five year old grandson has been diagnosed with being coeliac which explains a lot in that his growth has slowed down and so we are thankful we now know that there is something we can actively do to help. As I enjoy cooking and baking the challenge is on to make 'Gluten Free' (GF) foods for him, not least Gluten Free Bread as he is a bread lover, especially granddads. So we now have GF mince pies, Yorkshire Puddings and with a change to a recipe some excellent GF biscuits which he likes oh and some GF chocolate brownies. I did make a first batch of bread only to discover that the yeast was not GF so it couldn't be used. It's going to take us sometime to adapt what we do to ensure we enable him to be GF while seeking to make it as normal as possible. Key will always be making sure you don't cross contaminate foods when preparing them. I now have an app to check purchases to ensure they are GF. During lockdown when we were able to return to 'in person worship&
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