School visit

Bellingham First School coming to St Cuthbert's church

There they are coming past the Town Hall, children aged four to eight, on their first visit of the new school year.  They have been learning about "our local community" and now they're coming to look at some of the significant places.  After welcoming them and pouring water from St Cuthbert's Well into the font with an explanation of baptsim, I give them the worksheet which asks "What happens at the font?"  We go on to "What happens at the altar?" and they partiularly enjoy counting the crosses in the building.  As ever, visitors show interest in things I pay no attention to:  "What's that door?"  "It leads to the vestry where I keep things."  So I invite the children to suggest colours that the priest might wear on different occasions and then show them some of the vestments.  There's a little disappointment that we don't have any pink or orange robes, but most of them were satisfied with green, purple, white/gold,red, black and "all seasons tapestry".
    The visit ends with a look at the prayer corner where anyone can come into church and place a stone on the "prayer cairn" or write a request for prayer on a "leaf" to fix on the prayer tree.