Parish News Letter - Church News
The gathering of Anglican bishops from all over the world for the Lambeth Conference is a remarkable event, even if the press are looking for every opportunity to find something controversial to report about it.
In the run-up to the conference, we had the pleasure of welcoming Bishop Sixbert Macumi, the bishop of Buye in Burundi, and his wife Clotilde when they came to Wadhurst for a few days at the end of June.
When they joined us for our Sunday worship in church, everyone heard from
the bishop something of the life of his country and of the church there. We
learnt that life is hard for many people – they often live on less than a dollar
a day – but we also learnt that the church there is strong. It is doing a
lot of work for reconciliation now that the country’s civil war is behind it.
Bishop Sixbert was instrumental in setting up the link between Wadhurst Primary
School and Mwumba Primary School – a church primary school in his diocese.
It was great to be able to go with him to pay his first visit to our primary
school; he spoke to the children in assembly and presented gifts from our link
school. He and his wife (who is, herself, a primary school teacher) were very
interested by their tour of the school.
One other particularly memorable experience was to take them to Eastbourne. They live some 700 miles from the sea; it was wonderful to see the look on Clotilde’s face as, standing with us on the beach, she saw the sea for the first time in her life.
For me and my family, it was huge fun, and a great privilege, to have them staying in our home; we did lots of laughing, and we felt enriched by having such lovely people with us and learning from them and praying with them. For everyone who met them, it was a reminder not only of the vibrancy of the faith of so many African Christians but also of how enriching it can be to spend time with people who come from a very different background from our own. Jeremy James