5th in Lent

Big occasion at Emmanuel today, the first day of our new rector, Fr Bill. 

His wife and family were at the Service too but they are going to continue to live in Ohio, and will be going back on Tuesday.  They have a very severely disabled child who needs round-the-clock care and supervision.   His wife is also a priest and is known as Mother Tracey.  Which sounds a little weird, I don't think I have heard that in England but perhaps it is because our high Anglo-catholic churches don't have women priests.  Certainly not in the Chichester diocese.

After the Service there was lunch.  Apart from Wednesdays there are two kinds of meals at Emmanuel; there's the potluck where everybody brings something and the drinks on offer are water, coffee and cold tea.  And there's the 'Special Occasion' and today's lunch was special occasion.  The church provides the meat which was ham, pulled pork and smoked brisket; and wine.  And members all bring a side dish. I knocked up a sweet corn salad.  
There was also proper china, linen napkins, the best silverware, as opposed to the disposable stuff in less important meals.

Every table had a basket of gifts for Fr Bill of items particular to Oklahoma and Shawnee.   There were lots and lots of gifts and I think a lot of them came from the affluent members of the congregation who are very generous on these occasions.

Instead of tablecloths there were maps of Oklahoma and Shawnee.

Yesterday, Saturday, I thought it was time I got to grips with my new Tom Tom, which is WAY, WAY more sophisticated than the extremely basic GPS I had.  I have a choice of accents, male or female, British or American, human or computer.  The computer voice gives warnings, but the human doesn't, so I chose British, male, computer.  

Coming out of the Golden Corral I should turn left to be in the right direction for home, but I learned in defensive driving at the Senior Centre never to cross lanes of traffic, so I turned right and waited for the 'voice' to scream at me that it was re-calculating, but it didn't, it quickly got me round and back in the right direction.

I went to a Water Garden centre a couple of miles out of Shawnee which has been advertised a lot on television lately.  I thought it might be like Paradise Park, a garden centre near Newhaven which has so much in it there are coach tours out to it.  But it was nothing like Paradise Park, I looked round it in two minutes.

  And photographed these fish.