Women's Fellowship Events at
St Peter's Church Farnborough, Hampshire
Church of England, Diocese of Guildford

We started our meeting with a thank you letter from CMS for last month’s retiring collection. Lorna had made and distributed birthday corsages to those who had their birthdays in March and a special flower arrangement to Jill Balcombe as she and Ron celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary in March too. During our time of worship, we sang a hymn and Jill Balcombe read a Bible passage and led us in prayer.  Chris introduced Will and Fliss and as they had Daniel with them, aged 15 months, they planned to share their talk time and illustrate it with photos on a power-point presentation,.

Wil told us first about how he became involved in Mission overseas. A lady at his Church in 1999 told him that God had spoken to her and told her Wil would be the 4th person in the team to go to Israel; he told her he wasn’t. Putting this to the test, he asked his boss if he could go, expecting to be told no, but his boss said if his God had said he was to go he was!! He had never been a traveller before and it was quite an experience for him. Later, in January 2004 he went to Nepal and helped set up a child protection policy and was looking to see what was happening to Christians there. His next trip was to Thailand and Burma, as during training for ordination they had to embark on a project to “Live out their faith in the real world”.  A friend of theirs was working with Burmese Refugees “Check” project, doing health checks and Wil and Fliss joined them organising crafts, sports and drama. There was no electricity, water and over crowding.  There was an air of depression amongst the men and they had drug problems. They tried to bring hope to them.

Fliss then told us about being brought up in East Africa. When she was 18 she went to work in Tanzania with Tearfund. During her time at University she spent some time during the holidays in Ecuador helping to build a HIV aids clinic and in the afternoon looking after the street children singing songs and having a fun time with them. As well as the trip to Nepal and Thailand and Burma she obtained a degree in International politics and an MA in Overseas development.  Fliss worked for Christian Solidarity Worldwide for 6 years and she still works for them in a voluntary capacity; she has a monthly prayer group at their house and they write letters to prisoners.

With Wil’s work as Curate here at St Peter’s, their  life now is with Daniel in the Parish, but Fliss told us she would eventually like to train as a nurse and they hope to go overseas again.

Photos:

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