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ALL IN A NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT AT THE GUILD We have now completed the first half of our Guild Session and it was nice to greet a couple of new members who joined us. We have about 40 ladies at each meeting, which is very good. Our session started with a musical evening at which we were entertained by young people from Peterhead Academy, led by Mrs Diane Pert and our own Elaine. It was a lovely evening and the young folk were so talented, we all left feeling uplifted and with a spring in our step. The second meeting was also a musical one. May and Bill Lovie and Steven and Roslyn Bruce came along to sing to us and share the gospel message. Again we felt blessed. Next came the new minister at the Old Parish Church, Rev. Pauline Thomson, who gave us a very thought provoking talk on people trafficking , especially young women who think mistakenly that they are coming to this country to work in hotels and restaurants, only to find themselves sold for the sex trade. The wider Guild has been focussing on this for over a year and trying to do something practical to help stop this evil trade. She also had stories of young boys in India who are taken from their parents, often by relatives, who tell the parents that the boys are going to another village to go to school and get a better education, when in fact they are sold on to work in factories. One ten year old child had died and his uncle didn’t even tell the family, although he knew what had happened to the boy. Our next speaker was another minister new to this part of the world, the Rev. Bob Fowlie of Longside Church. He told us what had drawn him to be a minister and how hard it had been for him to reach his goal. He told us about his former church in Falkirk. It had been decided to make the church buildings into halls and to build a new church alongside it. The new church was just a couple of weeks from completion when a workman accidentally set fire to it and the whole building was burnt to the ground! Quite a traumatic time for the congregation. Our first meeting in November was taken by Sheila Kendall of Friends International. She brought along two students, one from Taiwan and one from China. Their English was amazing. She asked them questions and they answered them. She asked them what they thought of Aberdeen. They both said they were pleased to be at Aberdeen University and that everyone was so kind to them and they thought Aberdeen was a very small and quiet city after their home towns. One was studying design and she was in a post graduate class, but the other girl, who came from China, was doing first year media studies. They said they found the Aberdeen dialect very hard to understand, and they also found that it was very cold. They appreciated the work of Friends International, as they provided Bible classes and had places where they could go and meet other overseas students and have a cup of coffee or tea and a chat. Lots of students are here for three years and can’t afford to go home in the holidays, so Friends International is somewhere for them to get friendship and help. Our next meeting was a
Christmas Floral Art demonstration by Mary Bratton of Cruden Bay. Mary
is a trained demonstrator, so we really enjoyed the arrangements she
made, two of which are in the church at the bottom of the cross.
We now look forward to starting the second
half of our session on 9th January with the Rev. Andrew Jolly showing us
slides and talking about his time in Iraq. This would probably interest
the men too, so do come along if you would like to hear him.
Jan 9 : Rev. A Jolly - Talk & slides on
Iraq. Rose Wiseman |
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