A change of plan!

I'm afraid that our church picnic and baptismal service to Dores Beach had to be postponed today. 25mph winds and torrential rains gave us no other choice. We are going to hold it on the first sunny Sunday afternoon after the school summer holidays.

'Joseph' at Hilton Primary

Tonight saw the third and last performance from the children of Hilton Primary School of the fantastic west end musical 'Joseph and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat'. The past three nights have seen the whole school, at one point, on stage being part of the show. All the cast, dancers and choir members were amazing. It was an amazing thing to be involved in and an experience I will never forget and one that I am desperate to do again. So who knows what show will be next...watch this space!

Check out the Inverness Courier next week (maybe tuesday) for a write up about the show.

Chris

PS: do you recognise anyone in the photo?

HILLWALK

There are many keen hillwalkers in Hilton Church. A few years ago, we had a great day together walking on some of the hills in Glen Affric. We thought it might be a good idea to try and organise a days hillwalking for a Saturday before the end of the summer. We have pencilled in Saturday 30th August, and we will seek to guage the level of interest over the next couple of Sundays. We would aim to have a walk which would be suitable for a wide range of abilities across the age range.There will be a sign up sheet in the church. You can also express your interest by way of commenting on the blog.

Great News from Kinmylies.

After nearly two years of searching and advertising, we are delighted to report that following an interview last weekend, which exceeded our expectations, the interviewing panel of six unanimously agreed to offer the post of Youth Pastor in Kinmylies Church to Anne Gunn for three years.

We are further delighted to report that Anne has accepted the offer and hopes to start work with us around the beginning of the new school year in August - probably on Monday 18th August.Anne is 28 and a fully qualified Primary School teacher from Aberfeldy. She has considerable and varied work experience with young people at home and overseas, and is currently teaching in two schools in North and South Uist. She has a clearly defined call to full time Christian service within the church in Scotland and we believe that she brings many gifts to this new work with young people in Kinmylies.

Please pray for Anne as she makes preparations for finishing her time in Uist, finding accommodation in Inverness, moving, settling in, making new friends and starting work here in August.We are deeply grateful to the Lord for the way he has led us to this appointment - we had to learn patience - and look forward to seeing all that he has in store for the church and parish over these coming months and years.Thank you all for your prayer support in this new venture!-P-- Peter & Kathleen Humphris

1040 window

Andrew Jones has posted a fascinating reflection on the power of the internet, and the opportunity it presents to the church to reach 1 billion people.

The work begins!

Rok Construction moved onto the site on Monday morning to do some preparatory work.At 8am on Tuesday morning, Iain Ross and Alan Brown had a site meeting with the Rok Team to go over some of the details of the work. By mid morning, the wall between the church and the old manse was demolished, and by Wednesday lunchtime diggers were moving major amounts of earth from the front of the building. It's great to see the work forging ahead so quickly from the beginning.

Loch Ness Baptisms 22 June – all welcome!

Yes, on 22 June we have two adults being baptised by full immersion in Loch Ness – now that must be some kind of serious commitment to the whole principal of baptism! This will be at Dores Beach and we will be having a church picnic (please bring your own picnic) at the same time. We will start around 1pm and probably have the baptisms around 2.30pm depending on the weather. This is a great chance to bring some friends and family to see and share something very special.
We hope this little video might get you thinking too…

Here's another video of a full immersion baptism up in Orkney...

Licence terms of this video

Frenzy 2008

What an amazing event.....Frenzy 2008. Ask any of the young folk who were there and they will tell you just how good it was. As Duncan mentioned at church this morning, we didn't get back into Inverness until after 1pm, but by the time we had dropped everybody off at their doors it was 2.45 before I got home, and probably a wee bit later for the folks over in Kirkhill. It was a very long day but a very enjoyable one.

Frenzy is a fantastic event for all ages. It is extremely well organised and has something for everybody. I was volunteering on the Scripture Union stand this year, handing out SU Holiday brochures and speaking to lots of folk about the work of SU. SU had made t-shirts with our names on the back....I was very excited about this....even more excited when they said I could keep it...woohoo. After about 5 hours or so my time on the SU stand had come to an end, just in time to hear David Crowder Band. This was the band I really wanted to see and they were brilliant. These guys really know how to get a crowd going.....before we knew it Stuart and I were linked (football huddle style) with another dozen or so guys and girls, and with the other 8000 or so folks in the hall were bouncing as high as we could while singing "we're gonna dance like we're saved"....it was brilliant. What an experience.

Next came Chris Tomlin. We sing a few of Chris Tomlin's songs in church, in fact we sang one this morning "How Great is our God". The next 45 mins or so turned out to be the best of the night, even better than David Crowder Band, sorry David if you are reading this blog. Having 8000 or so people of all ages, all singing their hearts out for God, is an AWESOME experience.

Words are really no good for explaining this event, it really has got to be experienced. Hilton young folk have been trailblazing for our congregation these past few years at Frenzy, so next year I think we should organise a bigger bus and take you all down to Frenzy 2009........

Chris

Love for Lesotho

Meet Lerato

Lerato lived with his parents in a 'decent' house, basic but warm and with two bedrooms. He went to a good school and was doing well. Then his parents got sick one after the other and died two years apart - Lerato was orphaned when he was 10. He found himself on the streets – where life is hard. Lerato gets food any way he can, and struggles to keep warm at night. Orphaned children rank low in Lesotho and have very few rights – when he was twelve, Lerato and his friend were gang raped by security guards. Lerato is now fourteen and still living on the streets. We can help him…


As many may know, I intend to move there with Palesa in October to set up and run a crisis care centre for boys like Lerato who are living on the streets, giving them safety, nourishment, medical care and the chance to go to school. Above all, I would like to give the boys a hope for the future, and the knowledge that they are not forgotten, that Jesus loves them and that people do care.


We had a meeting last Thursday for those who were interested in helping me from this end – a great team of folk!
We are now aiming to raise awareness for the work by producing a leaflet, creating a website and getting in touch with the press to do a feature on the work that I will be doing. We are also hoping to raise some funding for the running costs of the centre through giving folks the opportunity to set up a standing order to help Lerato and other children like him.

If you would like any more information, or would like to donate any amount of money, however small, please get in touch.

Robyn Hammond

The power of imagination

This morning I'm finishing off a sermon for Sunday on discipleship based around Luke 6 v12-17. I am going to introduce one of the lifeshapes - the triangle - which I learnt last November while visiting St Thomas' church, Sheffield. An inspiring church which is well worth visiting.

One of the points I want to particularly focus on is the fact that our vision of discipleship will in large measure define how we do it. I was particularly struck this morning by a quote from JK Rowling's lecture at Harvard University yesterday in which she said,

“We do not need magic to change the world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already – we have the power to imagine better.”

I think God has given us all the resources we need to imagine our lives and the world better.

The clearance begins!

An awesome team turned up tonight to start clearing the former manse. So many folk volunteered that Iain Ross was eventually forced to say that we had enough help! It has been so good to see the level of interest and enthusiasm increasing over the weeks and months. Thanks to everyone who helped and expressed a willingness to help.

The calm before the storm?!

Grand designs eat your heart out....! We think you will be pleasantly surprised with the transformation soon to start on the current site of the old manse! Don't miss the emerging transformation live here on Hilton Blog.