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Jan 4th	8:00am	Holy Communion
	10:00am	Family Service
Jan 11th	10:00am	Holy Communion with Junior Church
	10:30am	St@PH (Word & Worship at Park Hill School) with communion
	4:00pm	Christingle Service
Jan 18th	10:00am	Holy Communion with Junior Church
	6:30pm	Service for Christian Unity at Lime Tree Methodist Church
Jan 25th	10:00am	Holy Communion with Junior Church
	10:30am	St@PH (Word & Worship at Park Hill School)
	6:30pm	Youth Service at St. Christopher's Church
Feb 1st	8:00am	Holy Communion
	10:00am	Family Service

Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 10am followed by coffee, including Christmas Eve.

The Pantomime season is upon us. “Oh no, it isn’t!” I hear you say. Well, it is in church circles, where for some reason producers tend to steer clear of Christmas on the grounds that they are busy with something else. Some of my fondest memories are associated with staging productions of Cinderella, Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and the Three Little Pigs (which has a good Christian message about not building your house out of straw, but out of something more substantial). Seeing young and old, up front and backstage people collaborating so effectively and so enjoyably has always felt like one of the closest approximations to what ‘real’ church is supposed to be all about.

It hasn’t always been so. In the days of Oliver Cromwell, acting was banned altogether, along with Christmas (how much quieter life must have been for the Vicar in those days!). And for many years that followed, acting was considered a disreputable profession (now they make actors President of the United States or Governor of California) and the church continued to frown upon it. Even in recent times, I read a diatribe on the internet, not against acting per se, but against pantomime, which encouraged men to dress in ladies’ clothing, which the writer thought was terribly immoral. I have to wear a dress every Sunday, so I couldn’t possibly comment.

The many science fiction films and books that depict the world decimated by plague or natural disaster explore what people are likely to do in the face of such devastating challenges. Will they pull together or will they break into factions and resort to violence to defend themselves from one another? It’s hard to be sure, and perhaps depends on whether you take an optimistic or bleak view of human nature. In the war years, the nation pulled together, and people still often invoke the “wartime spirit”. It is that same spirit that I have so much enjoyed in Panto productions, everyone pulling together, because after all, ‘the show must go on’!

In these times of economic gloom, the nation again needs to pull together (although I’m still not convinced that it is the solemn duty of every consumer to spend as much as they can). In the same way, the church is under great pressure, with divisions and falling attendances (although I’m pleased to say not at St Andrews), and needs to pull together. We can do this by celebrating the unique gifts each individual made in the image of God has. We should use all those gifts in collaboration, for we are the hands and feet of Christ in His world.

So, although St Andrews Church won’t be putting on a Pantomime this year, I hope it may not be too long before we do.

Open Morning at Junior Church
Following the success of the first open morning, on Sunday January 18th, St Andrew’s Junior Church will be giving another opportunity to children unfamiliar with what we do to come and find out for themselves. Parents can drop children off between 9.45 and 10am at St Andrew’s School and collect them at 11.15 from the church. Parents are of course welcome at the service, but there is no requirement to attend. This is an excellent way of ensuring your children learn the basics of Christian values and the Christian faith. Please note that children can only be accepted with a signed consent form.

In December, Eastern Green bid farewell to one of its longest standing residents – Doris Sweatman. Doris moved to Eastern Green when she was two years old and lived in both Lower and Top Green for ninety years. In her prime, she was the prime mover in the Women’s Institute in the 50s and 60s when they were still meeting in the parish room. She worked hard, cleaning the Vicarage, Church and Headmaster’s house. She and her husband Fred purchased land in Hockley Lane from Walter Neal and built their home there. Doris leaves behind her son Tony and daughter in law, Maureen and two grand-children.

Eastern Green Promise
A second dramatic production, celebrating the history of Eastern Green, is planned for the Spring. The piece entitled ‘Eastern Green Promise’ is to be staged in late March. The producer Greg Smith would be very pleased to hear from anyone in the community who would like to be involved, whether as an actor, musician or behind the scenes. A read through of the script is planned for Weds 7th January at 7.30 p.m. at the Vicarage. All welcome. Please telephone 7642 2856 or just come along.

Toys and Toy Boxes
Many thanks to the people of Eastern Green and Allesley Green for their wonderful support of the two toy appeals that were made in the build up to Christmas. Scores of shoe boxes filled with toys were sent off to war torn Liberia, while many more toys (following our annual toy service) were donated to Coventry City Mission, who ensure that they are distributed only to the most genuinely needy families in the city. Your generosity does great credit to the parish.

Screens
The church council of St Andrews is currently considering the wisdom and affordability of installing a permanent screen or screens in the church to facilitate our worship. Making the right decision about whether to go ahead with this, and if so with which system is a challenge. So, we wish to consult as widely as possible about this. We are planning to undertake this consultation on the last Sunday of January and first Sunday of February at our morning services. Please do join us to voice your opinion.

Rock Solid
Our Youth Group, Rock Solid, aimed at School Years 6-8 inclusive meets at Kenthurst Scout Hut at 6.30-8pm most Sundays, starting Jan 11th. We are now opening the group up to the wider community. We play lots of games (sometimes messy ones), talk about issues relevant to young people and make new friends, while learning about the Christian faith in a non threatening way.

St Andrews Fish & Chip Quiz Night
Eastern Green Village Hall
Church Lane
Sat 24th January 2009 at 7pm
Adults 6.50
Children 3.50
Maximum team of 6
Tickets available from: Fran Smith 7642 2856 Book early to avoid disappointment

Thank you ….
St.Andrew's would like to say ‘thank you’ to Margaret Waterworth for her generous donation of a television set to our Rock Solid and Mettle youth groups.

Eastern Green Golden Years
At our meeting on 6th November, two members were given a plant in celebration of a ‘special’ birthday. We also sang Happy Birthday to two other members.
Barbara announced that the holiday for next year at Eastbourne is now fully booked and thanked members for their support. Deposits for this holiday will be taken in the New Year.
On 20th November names were taken for our annual Christmas Dinner which takes place on Friday 5th December and there will be a total of 72 sitting down for this meal at the Village Hall.
Barbara mentioned that the meeting originally planned for 11th December would now take place on 18th December when the children from St Andrew’s school would be entertaining us and our annual Christmas Raffle would take place.
The meeting finished at 3.30pm, after tea and bingo, etc.
June Orton.

The AGM was held in December and a new committee was elected to carry on the work of the group during the next year. We would like to start gathering information on the history of the farms in the area before the housing development of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Would anyone with photographs or information on this or anything to do with the history of Eastern Green please ring Ken on 76403372. There will not be a meeting in January.

Our first meeting in the New Year will be on 2nd February 2009 at 2pm in St Andrew’s Church meeting room. Colin Bullas will tell us about the ‘Progress So Far.’

We met in the Church room on Human Rights Day and wrote 52 greetings cards! (More will be written at home and school). We meet again on Thursday Jan 29th at 7.30 to write appeals for release of the unjustly imprisoned all over the world.
Please join us. It is effective in many cases, resulting in better treatment, if not release.

Thanks ….
My thanks to the wonderful staff at St Cross Hospital, Rugby and the Outpatients’ Department at Walsgrave Hospital after my recent hip operation.
Nearer home thanks to Vicar, Greg, and Fran, my fellow choristers, Rebecca (Peoples’ Warden) and many members of St Andrews for your prayers, cards and visits, also to our host of good neighbours, and most of all thanks to my dear wife, Marian, of 58 years, for her care, devotion and patience over the last 6 weeks.
Finally and above all else thanks be to God for my speedy recovery.
Alan Letten.

We now look forward to another happy and successful W.I. Year as we begin 2009. We have a terrific programme planned for this year and we kick off this month by welcoming Mr John Clark who does such worthwhile charity work in Uganda. He will be talking to us about the work which is being carried out there and earlier in the year we were asked to knit as many teddies as we could so that he and his fellow workers can distribute these to the many needy children there. These are children who do not possess any other toys and so these simple knitted teddies mean everything to them. Our members have been busy clicking away with their knitting needles and we will hand these teddies over to him knowing that they will bring some joy to the children.
In addition, we will have an American supper buffet and a general social evening.

As a taster as to what is to come later in the year, we will be listening to a Coventry Male Voice Choir, hearing about the life of a female scientist, a quiz, global care, dressing the knight (wow!) and much more.

February we have a talk on the Warwickshire Coal Mines. We do try to vary the topics to please the members.

We meet on the first Wednesday of each month in the Village Hall, Church Lane, at 7.30pm. Please come along, we are a friendly crowd and you also have a cuppa and a cake!

St Andrew’s C of E Infant School
The staff, pupils and governors at the school wish you all a happy New Year.

November and December at St Andrew’s was once again a busy time especially with the preparations for the Christmas season.

The children performed their Christmas concert, called the ‘Christmas Detectives’, for their parents and carers on three occasions, as well as performing to Year 3 children from the junior school and to the Golden Years group. The concert focussed on the real meaning of Christmas and provided an opportunity to remind people about the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. Feedback was once again very positive.
We were invited to attend the junior school to see their Christmas concert. We were brave and took the whole school! This was a lovely occasion and the standard of the performance was fantastic! We also had a visit from the Year 6 pupils to perform their ‘Young Voices’ performance for us – again this was excellent,
A special visitor to our assemblies this term has been Karen and her various puppets from Jabez Ministries. The children (and staff too!) have enjoyed her visits. Karen very successfully tells Bible stories to the children in a most exciting and meaningful way. We look forward to this term when we will see Karen again - we have booked her to take an assembly each month!
Other events have included our Year 2 children visiting St John’s museum, the school council organising a Bring and Buy Toy Sale to raise money for the Blue Peter Appeal, a successful Christmas Fayre organised by the PTA, our reception children receiving a visit from the Herbert Museum and the very entertaining Pantomime, Aladdin, for the whole school on the last day of term.

All in all a very successful term and a 2008.
Best Wishes,
Angela Driscoll, Headteacher

We drive along a pleasant road lined with olive trees; ancient trees that can live and continue fruiting for more than 2000 years. Some of these may have been harvested at the time of Christ. Some of the Palestinian village families have been farming here from time immemorial, long before the time of Christ, even before Abraham arrived from what is now called Iraq. There have been Christian villagers since their compatriot Jesus walked the hills, taught and maybe used their olive oil.

We have come to a stop. The road is blocked by a huge 9 metre, 30 foot high, solid concrete wall, twice the height of the notorious Berlin Wall, extending out of sight in both directions. It is built to stay. We feel completely dwarfed as we stand at the foot of its towering obscenity.
The Israeli Government calls it a “security fence” supposedly to stop suicide bombers but this is blatantly not the case. Palestinians live on both sides of the Wall, as do Israelis.
What the Wall does do is cut families off from their ancestral land. They may, or may well not, be given permits to tend their trees, maybe “yes” today but “no” for the next week. They cannot plan ahead or follow the seasonal needs of their farms. What the Wall also does is divide families, communities and Ghetto-ise areas.
The United Nations agreed a “Green Line” as a demarcation between Arab and Jewish land, (although some Palestinians still live in their old villages in Jewish areas but as 2nd and 3rd class citizens with few rights or services). But the Wall is built far into the Palestinian side of the Green Line. That has been declared illegal by the UN but, heavily backed financially and politically by the USA, it is still being built, often requiring the bulldozing of homes and villages to clear its route.
Many Israelis are totally against this travesty of justice and inhumanity by their Government. We met an impressive young Israeli lady, Sarah, who belongs to ICAHD – the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. These people stand alongside Palestinians in front of the bulldozers that are clearing the way for the Wall or for illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. When houses are demolished, they help to rebuild them, again and again and again as they are destroyed. Brave people indeed!

The Wall now straggles along the West of the West bank and completely surrounds Bethlehem. The Gaza Strip, on the Mediterranean Coast is also surrounded, causing it to be described as the biggest concentration camp in the world.
Along the Wall are checkpoints through which one must pass. We opted to walk through with our Palestinian guide. Through a tall enclosed turnstile, across an open yard, single file into a wire mesh enclosed cattle cage like passage, through another turnstile, with army guards and passport checks at every stage. We got through easily as foreigners, but local Palestinians have to queue every morning for 2 to 3 hours to get to work (if they are allowed through, an arbitrary daily uncertainty) and another 2 to 3 hours to get home in the evening. There are well documented cases of women giving birth at checkpoints; not allowed through to hospital.
Today Mary and Joseph would not be allowed into Bethlehem (in the West Bank) as they came from Nazareth. Maybe Jesus would have been born, not in a stable, but at a checkpoint. The shepherds would not have been allowed through at night but would have had to queue until morning.
The checkpoints are manned by 18 to 21 year old conscripts doing compulsory national service. What does it do to these impressionable men and women, taught to brutalise and humiliate fellow human beings? It is so sad that the Jews who have been persecuted and humiliated over the centuries have now become the persecutors and humiliators.
But, a blank concrete wall offers itself as an open canvas for some fine graffiti and protests from all over the world. An outstanding one for me was of a bulldozer swinging its chain and ball against a huge living heart.
A tiny symbol of hope I noticed was corner of one of the concrete wall panels that was crumbling. Pray that one day it may all, like the Berlin Wall, be demolished by people-power.

In Jerusalem, the Western Wall – the “Wailing Wall” is the only part of the Temple and its ramparts remaining after the destruction of the city in AD 70. Here Jews, young and old, Orthodox and Liberal, men and women, pray for the restoration and peace of Jerusalem. We joined them, praying for peace based on Justice. Please pray for them.
Frances Hawkey
(The second in a series about David’s and my study-tour of the
Holy Land in October).

He came to John
In the Jordan
That day,
Jesus,
Man that he was,
Purer than the water that washed him.
In his Baptism
Man before God,
God before man.
He came to Jesus
In the Jordan
That day
Spirit,
God that he is,
Affirming son-ship,
In a love
That asks painful questions
And answers with an empty tomb.
by Daphne Kitching

St Andrew's Church Eastern Green