Partners Midweek Break

“What a wonderful time we’ve had. When do you want my deposit for next year.” That was the response from one of our ‘first timers’ visiting Partners Week 2007.

As you may know, Brockley Hall in Saltburn, North Yorkshire was our venue. The speaker, David Cole, a freelance evangelist from Devon really blessed us all, not only through his expository preaching on Elijah but also with his sunny personality. He was ‘one of us’ from the word go.

This year there were more of us than ever and it was so good to welcome many new friends. We had a group of about forty at Saltburn. Sadly, Les and Kathleen Vincent were unable to come this year as Kath’s long awaited knee operation was brought forward so prevented them from travelling to North Yorkshire. It did not, however, prevent her from preparing and sending all the material for ‘Fun and Games’ to Saltburn. We also missed Robin and Barbara Davies due to Robin’s illness and we remembered them all in our prayers.

During our stay we were brought up to date with the progress being made to put CE ‘online’ and whilst some of us don’t understand all the ‘ins and outs’ of this we do recognise the important part we have to play through our prayers if it is to succeed in bringing CE to the young people of today.

On Wednesday we had a really interesting visit to Beamish, a heritage site near Durham, where we travelled back to a by gone age. Old trams transported us to as village, town and farm of long ago in glorious sunshine. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day out.

I would sincerely like to invite anyone who has not been to our midweek break before, to consider joining us next year at Lindors, a Methodist Guild hotel in the Wye Valley. It will be held from 6th – 10th October 2008 and our speaker is tom be Dennis Davies (DV) who is Chairman of British Union or GB&I to give him his full title. Dennis is someone who has grown up through CE and many of you will have met him either as excursion leader (with twin brother Ron) in his younger days or, more recently, as our English Union President.

I am taking over from Roy (Cumberlidge) so will be responsible for organising our breaks. I would like to express my thanks to him and Ken (Rankin) for their support and encouragement. I am glad that I will still have their expertise to guide me.

I really believe that we older folk have a vital role to play in the work of CE in the twenty first century. While we may lack the physical strength which we once enjoyed we still have a ‘work for Jesus’ by our prayers, and the friendship and fellowship experienced in our movement are still available to us as we partner with the Holy Spirit to serve ‘Christ and His Church’.

If there is any way we can strengthen those bonds of Christian love please respond to our invitation to let us know if you still wish to be kept in touch with CE.
God bless you and grant you His peace.

Maureen Sudlow