Dear People & Friends of St. Clement’s,
The Floods
As all of you living in and around Prague will know, this past week the city has once more experienced major flooding. It seems that the flood defences put in place since the severe floods of 2002, have protected most of the historic centre from damage, helped by the Vltava not getting quite as high as it did eleven years ago. But I gather homes have been inundated in some of the outer suburbs, and in many smaller towns and villages elsewhere in Bohemia. Unfortunately, the Junior High School building of Riverside School has been flooded, a place where several of our congregation are either teachers or students.
Whilst the Chaplaincy Flat is well above river level, clearly part of the phone network serving it, is not. Last Monday evening at about 21.15, our landline phone went dead, and with it our connection to the internet. As I write this at around midday on Friday 7th June, we have still not been reconnected. So if you need to contact me by phone, the only way to do so at present is to ring my mobile 737 039 082.
Since Monday evening, the only way I have been able to send or receive email, is by taking the Chaplaincy laptop computer to a bar-restaurant that has wifi. I’m off for another pub lunch shortly, in order to send this Weekly Message :-) So please understand if I don’t respond to an email as quickly as you might expect me to. I’ve no idea when we will be reconnected. According to O2, our service provider, there are ‘technical difficulties in our area’ but no indication as to when these ‘technical difficulties’ might be overcome.
Sunday 9th June……
…..is the Second Sunday after Trinity and there will a Sung Eucharist at 11.00. It has been very good these last two Sundays to have been able to get the service underway at little more than a minute or two after 11.00 with a sizeable congregation in place! Our opening hymn this coming Sunday is ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing‘ so lets once more ensure that there are plenty of ‘tongues’ present to do so :-) There will be parallel Children’s Ministry and following worship, Cool Refreshments will be served at the back of Church.
On Sunday evening at 18.00 – Holy Communion with hymns in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, Nové sady 32a, Brno. Please do make our regular monthly Brno service known to any friends or family you have in the South Moravia area.
Two items of news
The new Summer edition of the ‘European Anglican Magazine‘ arrived this week. Copies will be available free in Church on Sunday. Within the magazine, is an article explaining the procedure to appoint a new Bishop in Europe, to succeed Bishop Geoffrey who retires in November this year. This is something several people have asked me about recently so do pick up a copy to find the answers to your questions!!
Our St. Clement’s polo shirts have been a great success. From our original order, we now only have six left for sale & have made a healthy CZK 5000 contribution to Church funds. In response to the request of several congregational members, asking for a different colour(s), this past week, Richard York placed an order for a new supply in BLUE! We don’t have a delivery date yet, but as soon as we do, I’ll let everybody know via this Weekly Message and the printed Weekly Bulletin.
That’s enough for this week. Now for some lunch & a wifi network so I can send this email.
Ricky
