VOLUNTEERS IN Mission is the short term work/witness team through which the Methodist Missionary Society (Ireland) prepares and sends groups to work alongside the communities of overseas partner churches. In 2008 one such group went to Togo in west Africa.
Plans are being developed for a similar team to visit Kenya in east Africa in 2009. It will be based at Marimanti, where an Irish Methodist, Helen Moorhead, is establishing a school for the deaf.
It is planned that some of the group will undertake some building work extending the premises. It is hoped to include an audiologist, who will contribute to the school programme
The old Methodist church at Florencecourt, Co Fermanagh, was in need of some repair. It also had the disadvantage of having no hall for social and other activities.
The growth of the congregation and the presence of a number of young families encouraged the leaders to plan an entirely new development. This new building will be opened on Saturday next, January 17th.
During his year of office as president of the Methodist Church, the Rev Roy Cooper and his wife Joy visited Poland. They stayed with the minister of the Methodist church in Kilece. The people there wanted to build an extension to their church. Mr Cooper's congregation in Newtownards organised a motorcycle show and sent the proceeds to Kilece.
Newtownards is not the only Irish Methodist church to establish links with sister churches in eastern Europe. The Enniskillen circuit has became interested in two Methodist congregations in Latvia, to whom they are giving some support.
The Retired Ministers Fellowship will hold its January meeting on Tuesday week. The venue will be the Cavehill church in Belfast and the morning's speaker will be Sir Desmond Rea, chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.
Tomorrow morning the Rev Aian Ferguson will pay a presidential visit to the church at Newry and in the evening to that at Lurgan. On Tuesday he will attend the Covenant Council, which encourages and monitors the development of co-operation between the Methodist Church and the Church of Ireland.
He will preside at the meeting of the Conference General Committee in Thursday.
On Saturday next, Mr Ferguson will open the new church at Florencecourt.The following day, he will preach at Lisburn in the morning and at Cookstown in the evening.
On the Thursday of the Unity Octave, January 22nd, he will preach at evensong in Trinity College Chapel in Dublin.