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On Saturday 16^th June at 10.30am I was in the reformed synagogue in Cambridge for their normal sabbath morning service, which included the Bat Mitzvah of N whose mother has been a member of St Paul’s church for many years. N had been a pupil at St Paul’s Primary School, if I am honest one of my favourites and extremely attentive in assembly with Mr Beckett. I felt very honoured to be invited to her service as a special guest, at which she read the Hebrew scriptures and even preached a sermon from the book of Judges!

On Sunday 17^th June at our St Paul’s morning service, F is baptised. S, her aunt, is Godmother and makes a speech she has rehearsed at Thursday lunch club, to loud applause.

On Wednesday the following week, I was in Poland taking the wedding of a couple who had attended a baptism at St Paul’s three years ago. After the baptism service, the bride to be asked if I would take their wedding (if ever the groom to be asked her that was!) I never anticipated that she would come back to me three years later to say that she hoped the offer still stood! The bride to be had asked me because I was the only person her now husband had ever listened to with attention! I never dreamt that the wedding would be in another country.

Michael Beckett

St Paul's has an ongoing commitment to supporting the Amos Trust and other organisations with their work in this area. Janet Walker writes:

A boat is on its way to Gaza with much-needed medicines for the Palestinians. They continue to demonstrate against that fact that they are not allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel. Doctor Swee Chai Ang is on board (she founded Medical Aid for Palestinians, having witnessed the aftermath of the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982) and writes as follows:

'They have wounded 300, and killed 4 yesterday in Gaza. Two of the children killed were playing in their parents garden and not even at the demonstration. There was a brief news statement from the occupying army - I can't trace the source now but the military announced that they will abduct the Awda and sell her and donate the money to some charity for Israeli soldiers! That is to show who is boss and nobody will dare mount any more flotilla!

They have also halved the food supply allowed into Gaza (OCHA report). The night watch on Awda (the name of the boat - it means 'return' in Arabic) has received desperate calls for life-saving intravenous antibiotics. Last minute I am only able to secure a handful to take on board, but not sure whether it is going to be allowed into Gaza or not.

Trust me - the people who are destroying our earth for gains are also the ones who invent and use the arms to murder and destroy Palestinians, the people of the Middle East, and the rest of the world. They are wreaking havoc. Why this evil and greed? It is such a beautiful world God has given us , but to share and to love. Not to appropriate and destroy.'