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January message from the Ministry Team

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Dear Friends,

As I came to preparing this article, I started to think about the years in my life, which ended with a six and what of significance for me, personally, happened in those years.

1966    My brother was born and as a family we moved into the house in Leeds where my mum lived, up until a year ago.

1976    I attended my first cricket match at Headingley, Leeds.  A match between Yorkshire and Lancashire.  A little disappointed that Geoffrey Boycott did not play.

1986    I finished my Accountancy and Finance degree and started work as a trainee Chartered Accountant.  Beth and I got married.

1996    Beth and I went to Oxford for me to train for ordained ministry.

2006    Beth and I went on a tour of the Holy Land.  A fantastic experience.

I have a love of history, with, my favourite battle happening in Sussex on 14 October 1066.

It is interesting, when you stop to think about it, how you can map things which shape our lives, across the decades.  Other years have contained other things, some of which have been good and some have been hard, at times very hard.  In all of this, God has been and continues to be with me, loving, caring, forgiving.  Sometimes I am aware of this and sometimes I am not.

Perhaps you already have something of a sense of significant things coming in 2016; moving house, birth of a child, finishing a course, surgery; or perhaps not.  However 2016 unfolds, Jesus invites us to keep close to him, to allow him to work in and through us.  For us to be a people of prayer, engaged with the world Jesus came, died and rose again for, and for us to share him, as we share our life with others.

Every blessing for 2016

Revd Andrew

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