Rosemary Kempsall – Worldwide President blogs on March 21 en route to Cardiff.
It’s Monday morning and a ‘Great Western’ train is hurtling through the English countryside en route for Cardiff and I’m onboard travelling to spend two days in the diocese of Llandaff and then a further 2 days in Monmouth.
The programme in front of me looks full starting with Midday Prayers at Llandaff Cathedral and an opportunity to meet the Archbishop of the Church in Wales, Barry Morgan. Midday prayers are a regular thing throughout the worldwide Mothers’ Union when we pray for our links in the world. It is always midday somewhere in the world and so we have a continuous circle of prayer that embraces the world.
Lunch with diocesan trustees follows. It’s so important to meet face to face with local leaders. Modern technology provides great ease of communication but you can’t beat a heart to heart chat for understanding and encouraging one another. So, arranged for me are visits to MU branches this afternoon and then in the evening a singing Festival at St Peter’s Church, Pentre.
I’ve chosen to draw my talk from the hymn ‘I the Lord of Sea and Sky’ a hymn about being called to serve our Lord. For me this hymn remains in my mind as the one that our first literacy trainers chose on their last night together in Mkono, Uganda before returning to the 3 countries of Sudan, Malawi and Burundi to get the pilot programme under way. Now, 11 years on this Mothers’ Union Programme has reached 73,000 learners, an amazing achievement.
I shall find singing this hymn again tonight quite emotional, as I always do.