Join in our all age services and parish events. Have a peek inside St Andrew's. We look forward to meeting you! Finance News Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Gift Weekend appeal.  The response was really wonderful.  To date nearly £29,000 has been donated which will be increased by Gift Aid to approximately £36,000  If anyone else would care to donate to St Andrew’s there are envelopes available at the back of the church. The success of the Gift weekend will hopefully mean that this year, with careful stewardship and continued fund raising, we shall avoid going into deficit. Please pick up the helpful leaflet in church entitled ‘Giving for Life’. It encourages us  to ‘Give thanks’, ‘Give regularly’, ‘Give generously’ and ‘Give yourself’. At present our electoral roll is approximately 200 persons of these 110 give regularly through bankers orders or weekly envelopes. This giving accounts for the majority of income and at the moment falls short of the £3,000 required each week to maintain the parish. All of this amount has to be raised by St Andrew’s. The Stewardship and Finance group are working hard to raise the profile of the need to maintain and improve our finances in the future. The best way to achieve this is by giving regularly and generously to the work of the church. By doing this we are responding to the generosity of God, who gives us so much.  If you are not already doing so, please consider making a regular commitment to the church either through  Banker's Order or the Envelope scheme. Details are available at the back of the church or you can contact the Stewardship secretary Richard Haines in care of the Parish Office, Tel  01252 715412 , who will be very pleased to offer help or answer any questions.  Curate Writes Summer, I hope, has arrived by the time you read this magazine! Time to relax; time to enjoy oneself; time to be with family and friends; time to explore and do something completely different…. How important it is that we make time for these things when our lives can so often become overfilled with work and commitments. As someone so poignantly said, ‘What is the point of gardening if you never sit in it and enjoy it!’ It happens all too easily. Time and space for reflection allows us to consolidate, to filter the unnecessary and discard the redundant; every garden requires careful pruning to encourage growth and enhance its beauty….we need time to think and reflect; it leads us into appreciation and thanksgiving. How good it is to sit back into the garden chair, stare up at the sky and let our minds wander with the clouds, to allow our imaginations to work their unpredictable ways. We may be pleasantly surprised by the outcomes, we may be inspired to walk a new path, explore a new venture. We can make time for conversation, the deepening of friendship and the building of new relationships...time for fun and enjoyment. Recently I spoke of Desmond Tutu’s maxim for life; it is how he would like to be remembered: ‘to love a lot, to laugh a lot, to live a lot. He has certainly accomplished all three! The first two weeks of July sees the return of the diocese’s summer school; it is something to make time for; it offers opportunity for reflection, imagination, inspiration, conversation and friendship. A few have discovered this, perhaps you will too. ~ Joy Revd Joy Lievesley