And now for a mask-free Easter!

It goes without saying that we are going to continue to take every precaution and do all that we can to keep everyone safe — but how wonderful that those who wish can now sing without a mask and can begin to enjoy again worship as it used to be!

Because our church is quite large and has some beautiful box pews, then those who wish to keep their distance and to wear masks can safely do that, while who wish to worship mask-free can do that as well!

As you will see from the list below, we have a busy programme of services for Easter — but this is only part of our offering for, in the evenings, following our service, there will be a programme of Biblical films exploring the Easter story. Some will be old   favourites and some perhaps, ones which you may have forgotten about because they appeared once on television and then disappeared.

Of course, the coffee bar will be open during each evening and the beauty of our church is that it is always warm. The Coffee Bar is also always open on Wednesday mornings from 10.30 until 12 noon.

Why not make this an Easter which you devote to learning and worshipping? You will never be the same again!

Our Easter Programme

Sunday 10th. April at 10.30 a.m.

Palm Sunday Service.

We remember Jesus entering Jerusalem as a pilgrim, riding on a donkey.

Monday 11th. April at 6 p.m.

Service for Monday in Holy Week.

We remember the cleansing of the Temple by Jesus in Jerusalem.

Tuesday 12th. April at 6 p.m.

Service for Tuesday in Holy Week.

We remember a day of teaching in the Temple.

Wednesday 13th. April at 6 p.m.

Service for Wednesday in Holy Week.

We remember Jesus in quiet at Bethany while     Judas prepares to betray Jesus.

Thursday 14th. April at 2 p.m.

A Service of the Stations of the Cross in the open air of our church yard.

Thursday 14th. April at 6 p.m.

Service for Maundy Thursday.

We remember Jesus sharing in his Last Supper with his disciples in the Upper Room.

Friday 15th. April at 6 p.m.

Service for Good Friday.

We remember the Passion of our Lord; his trial and his execution on the Cross.

Sunday 17th. April at 8 a.m.

A Service for Easter Day in the open air of our church yard, followed by breakfast in the church.

Sunday 17th. April at 10.30 a.m.

Easter Sunday Service of Holy Communion including the Ordination of new elders.

Our services are open to all and if you come to join us we promise you a very warm welcome.

What a beautiful world we live in!

We are so fortunate to live in this beautiful part of God’s world. That was a theme which came through a recent Presbytery conference held in Duns Parish Church.

As a result, as we reported in a previous newsletter, we decided to respond to the conference by creating a pilgrimage walk and a small chapel dedicated to telling the story of Saint Cuthbert who will have known our parish area well.

Work has now started on both of these projects and the first fifteen plaques can now be seen if you come to  visit our church yard. Eventually there will be almost fifty plaques and these will tell the story of Saint Cuthbert and will include prayers, meditations and   other thoughts to challenge our care of God’s world.

We hope that this pilgrimage walk will attract visitors to our church and will raise the profile of a Saint whom many people now only associate with his time in England — at Lindisfarne and later, after his death, with Durham. Of course, as know, his home was in Melrose and it was there that he started work as a   shepherd, before the vision described on this plaque:

Meanwhile work has continued on our Saint Cuthbert’s Chapel.

Dave has wood-panelled the lower part of the walls — and has made a magnificent job of it. Rachel has   painted the walls and ceiling a beautiful shade of duck blue and has added Celtic designs. The chapel is now ready for the prayer around the walls and the pictures of the life of Saint Cuthbert.

But work has now temporarily been halted because we are all working to create a home for a Ukrainian family. We have property available at Mount Pleasant and we have a splendid team of joiners and other workers within the congregation: so it is the obvious thing for us to do.

Making a Difference

No one reading this newsletter will need to be told that we are a tiny congregation in the smallest parish in Berwickshire. You would be excused for thinking that, small as we are, we would not be making much of a difference to the world in which we live.

We make more of a difference than you might think. In 2020, just before lockdown, twenty-eight of us visited the Holy Land and, while we were there, we visited the Jeel al Amal School in Bethany.

It’s a very poor (in financial terms) school in an area of great poverty, but as a school it never turns anyone away regardless of their religion or background (and that’s quite something where they are).

When we came home we sent money to buy some  luxuries — you see the games they bought with our money in the picture. So far we have sent them £5,000 and we are committed to adding to this total each year.

Dr. Linus Malu is our Missionary partner. He is based in Malawi and there he works with folk who have no way of supporting themselves. Very often this is with women who have been abandoned by their husbands and who now have no way of supporting themselves or their children — but sometimes it can be men who have been abandoned by their wives.

Because the economy is so different from our own, Linus is able to set people up in small businesses of their own and each business can cost as little as £300 for something which is totally life-changing for those involved. Of course, Linus is there to provide on-going support.

In a recent letter, Linus told us that “sometimes the women make such a big success of their businesses that their husbands want to come back and re-join the family!” We have so far contributed to quite a few small businesses in Malawi and we aim to provide at least £2,000 a year to Linus for his amazing work.

The picture above shows our first consignment of medical equipment being loaded into a container for Ukraine.

Our first load of equipment was largely made up of responder first-aid kits but we are now gathering funds both to send directly to Ukraine and to support a family when they come to stay with us.

Of course, there are many other ways in which we help other people, many of which it would not be appropriate to include within our newsletter, but the message is clear: even a very small congregation in a very small parish can make a big difference to the folk in the world which we  share. Next time you see the church as you pass by do remember all the love for others which is pouring from its doors!

From the Minister’s Desk

I want to tell you about the photograph you see here. The person with his camera photographing the view from Megiddo in Israel is Nael who was our guide when we visited the Holy Land early in 2022.

During the nearly two weeks that we were with Nael we saw so much. But, of course, in a limited time it is impossible to see everything; so now Nael is taking us on virtual tours of the Holy Land seeing all of the places we missed. Here he is showing us Megiddo, one of the most important sites in Old Testament times. Conscious that not everyone in our congregation was able to come to the Holy Land, Nael is now preparing a tour of Nazareth, where Jesus was born, for us all.

Isn’t technology wonderful? We can meet in our beautiful little church and share in a live tour of somewhere special with an expert guide just as people from all around the world can tune in and join us for our Sunday    morning service and then we can keep in touch with them by email afterwards. Fantastic!

Tucked away at the back of the Newsletter

This is tucked away at the back because, while it may be of interest to our members, it really isn’t of much interest to other folk.. It’s what you might call our domestic business.

First, we are delighted to tell you that three new elders have been appointed: Molly Hodges, Alan Leighton and John Baird. They will be Ordained and Admitted to the Kirk Session on Easter Sunday (which will make Easter Sunday even more to be celebrated)!

Second, the Kirk Session received the accounts at a recent meeting. These show that last year even although we had all of the difficulties with lock-downs, we still ended the year with more money in our General Account than at the start of the year.

You will remember that when we all started together five years ago we didn’t even have two brass farthings to rub together (in fact we inherited a few bills).

Last year we spent a considerable amount of money on ensuring that our equipment to enable us to stream our services was as good as it could possibly be (and the result of that can be seen on our live-stream available through our web-site). We also continued our programme of improving the church — our new coffee bar as well as the glorious gifts of our Stations of the Cross and Christmas candle-holders.

But even having spent as much as we have, we have generated a surplus and have just under £50,000 in the bank (a little over £43,000 is what is left in our Mission Fund and £6,000 is available for general purposes). So we have done well.

In reality we are where we are because of the generosity of our members and, even although this is tucked away at the back of the Newsletter, it is important that you all know how much your generosity is appreciated.

Congregations exist to make the world into a better place for other people and together we shall certainly be able to do that during the remainder of the year and into the future.

But we shall be doing so much more besides. The   regular Thursday evening film show will grow into something a little bigger. We are planning some meals together with speakers with something really interesting to say and we shall revisit our Mission and Education plans which were put on hold by the covid pandemic.

December, 2021 Newsletter

Getting Back to Normal!

And soon it will be Christmas — we hope that you will join  us.

Over recent weeks more people have been coming to church than we can ever remember and, what is really special for us, new folk are coming and joining our church family all the time.

That’s not to say that we don’t have some quiet Sundays because many of our congregation have families in different parts of the country to be visited and some have a penchant for foreign holidays but  almost everyone is with us on a Sunday morning if they are at home.

What more can we ask for? Well, if you are reading this newsletter and you are part of our parish we would love to have you with us — and when better to come than at Christmastime.

Yes, we still have to wear masks but that won’t stop us from singing all of our favourite Christmas carols! And we promise you that we will keep you safe while you are in church, whether that’s taking part in a service or enjoying refreshments afterwards.

We do have one very special evening to which you might want to come. It’s on Wednesday 22nd. December in our Church starting at 6 p.m. with a  sandwich, sausage roll and cake tea with some  Christmas entertainment followed by a short Road-Show by the Presbytery on their plans for the future of the Church in our area.

These plans will be discussed elsewhere in this newsletter but if you would like to come and join us on this evening, we would love to have you with us.

You might like to know as well that teas and coffees are served every Wednesday morning from 10.30 a.m. until 12 noon. It is a very informal coffee and chat   occasion and it is for everyone, no need to be a member or to ever have come to church. It’s a       communal event for our Fogo community.

Our Christmas Programme

Sunday 12^th. December at 10.30 a.m. A Service for the third Sunday of Advent.

Sunday 19^th. December at 10.30 a.m. A Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.

Friday 24^th. December at 6 p.m. Christingle Service

Friday 24^th. December at 11.15 p.m. Watch-night Candle-lit Service

Saturday 25^th. December at 10.30 a.m. Christmas Day Family Service with ‘fun around the tree’and a Christmas Celebration of Holy Communion (following all appropriate guide-lines).

Sunday 26^th. December at 10.30 a.m. Boxing Day Service of Music and Christmas words from down the ages.

Sunday 26^th. December at 5 p.m. A Service in which we remember those we love but whose absence we miss – an absence which we feel even more at Christmas-time.

Sunday 2^nd. January at 10.30 a.m. A Service for a New Year.

We promise you a warm welcome at any or all of our Services. If you can’t join us in person then why not join in with our live-stream which is available at

www.fogokirk.org ….

…. and next time you might want to come in person!

What could be more beautiful?

All of the best pictures of our church have been taken by Molly — until now! This picture was taken by her son, Sandy, while he was home from Singapore and brought his drone with him. It really does remind us in what a beautiful spot our church was built all those years ago.

It is good to be able to report that the building is in a fine state of repair and that it survived the recent storms without a scratch. We are extremely fortunate.

One of our plans is to build a short pilgrimage walk around the perimeter of the church yard. This walk will tell the story of Saint Cuthbert on plaques made for the purpose. These plaques will also contain prayers and readings to guide the thoughts of those who choose to follow the trail which will end up in the church at the new little chapel which is currently under construction and which will also tell the story of the Saint who must have passed this way on several occasions during his life-time.

Saint Cuthbert has much more to teach us, however, for he is one who lived close to nature and taught his monks to care for the community of animals with whom they shared God’s world.

Caring for creation is not just an option for us today; it is an imperative if we are to pass on our beautiful world to those who follow us and our pathway and chapel will help keep this at the front of our minds as well as speaking to those who come here of the beauty of God’s creation.

Here is our St. Cuthbert’s Chapel. There is a lot of work to be done! The walls, from the wooden baton in the  picture to the floor, will be oak panelled.  From the panelling to the line you can just see, three feet or so above, there will be painted the life story of Saint Cuthbert, and, above that, will be a prayer of the Saint in lettering of about six inches high.

It will be a beautiful and a quiet place of meditation and we hope that it will be used by our members, by our community and by those who come to visit. All of the work is being done by our own members and we are extremely grateful to them all.

Now here is a picture you might want to keep and show to your grandchildren! This is how we used to have to go to church, all wearing our masks!

We hope that this won’t be the future for us all for all time to come but, while you are looking at the masks, do look and see how very beautiful our church looks as well.

It’s always warm, it has comfy seating, it is always well filled and it is ever so friendly. And, what’s more, the church is always open!

Big Changes afoot!

All over Scotland congregations are wondering what is going to happen to them over the next few years. Our traditional Presbyteries are going to disappear, to be replaced by fewer larger ones.

The Presbytery of Duns will join with the Presbyteries of Lothian, Jedburgh, and Melrose and Peebles to   create the new Presbytery of Lothian and the Borders. This will take effect from the 1st. January, 2023 — just twelve months away.

The number of full-time ministers serving Berwickshire and the town of Berwick will drop to just four from the 1st. January, 2025. How will we cope?

The Church of Scotland centrally envisages that as many as forty percent of Church buildings will close. Those that remain will obviously have to be able to show that they have a viable congregation, that they have the facilities necessary to serve the needs of their members and their communities in the years ahead and that they can afford to pay their way.

We are not sure what the future holds for us in Fogo. Our presbytery appears to have accepted that we can’t just continue to make bigger and bigger parishes and expect one minister to look after more and more congregations and more and more people. Instead, the limited staff which our area will have will perhaps be used to support the members of congregations to look after themselves.  That’s not something which frightens us. In fact it’s what we have been doing for the last five years.

We regularly conduct our own worship. We care for each other in our church family. We are adapting our building as we can to make it more appropriate both for our own use and for community use as well. We seek to reach out into our community. We learn about our faith and we seek to make a difference to the world.

This Christmas we are giving financial gifts to our Missionary partner, Dr. Linus Malu who is working in Malawi helping men and women abandoned by their partners to set up small businesses with which to support their children. It is wonderful work and Linus achieves so much with so little in our terms.

We are also sending money to the Jeel al Amal children’s school in Bethany. We visited the school when our congregation went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land last year and we saw how the staff of this school welcomed everyone and provided an education, and for many, a home, for those who otherwise would have nothing at all.

We’re not a rich congregation but our members are extremely generous and we are totally self-supporting and with enough to spare to help other people. Of course, in the world’s terms, we are extremely rich and so it is important that we try to make a difference: here in our own community and throughout the world.

From the Minister’s Desk

There is no doubt that Covid has affected us but now we are beginning to get back to normal. There are still one or two of our members who are not quite sure about returning to Church but several, I might also say many, new folk have come to join us and our numbers are now back to where they were before the pandemic hit.

We are all having to learn new skills! How do you sing while wearing a mask? How do you read the words from our Orders of Service without your glasses steaming up? How do you remember not to hug a friend or offer your hand to a stranger who has come to join us?

Remarkably, we have all learned to take these things in our stride! It is great that we are now permitted to share in after-church refreshments and to sit and chat with each other again.

I’ve had to learn all kind of new skills, not least learning to communicate with folk through video. One of the hardest things has been being unable to attend school assemblies but rather having to prepare my message on video and hand it in to the school on a memory stick — it’s certainly not something I was taught at college all those years ago!

Our Sunday service now is live-streamed, ‘broadcast’ might be a better word, on our website every Sunday morning. It’s watched by some of our folk who are  unable to come to church but it is also watched as far afield as in America and in Switzerland from where we now boast ‘overseas members.’

In order to keep in touch with everyone I now prepare a Saturday email which I send out to everyone on our Church list (it is on our church website) and I try to keep everyone aware of all that is going on in our church community. Staying in touch is so very important.

Our Plans for 2022

If you haven’t visited Fogo Parish Church recently it would be worth popping in to see how beautiful the building has become and how suitable it now is for community events of all different kinds.

High on our list of plans for next year is to restart our programme of musical events. Already we have been approached from a number of different directions about the possibility of groups coming to perform in the Church. Our answer has always been that we would love to have them.

There are some groups totally new to Fogo and that will be great but we are particularly hoping that Frog and Henry, the New Orleans Jazz Band, who have made two visits to us before Covid, will return in the new year.

We are also going to start a number of congregational evenings in Church in the new year. Our plan is that each of these will be in groups of four evenings so that the commitment from those who come is not for an extended time.

We are talking about having a series of four special guest speakers: perhaps we might start the evening with a simple supper and then sit on our new comfy seats and enjoy hearing a really good speaker entertain or enlighten us.

We have some special films we might show. Again this might be best in a series of four and might end with some light refreshments while we talked about what we had seen.

Some folk have expressed a desire for some form of Bible Study — not the kind where we come along and open the Bible and all speak about what is written but rather where there is an introductory talk explaining the background and perhaps identifying what we can learn and why the passage or the book has been valued over so many years. So many of us realise that we don’t have the Bible knowledge that our grand-parents had and we’d like to learn.

And then there are those of us who would like to meet regularly and eat together, using the basic facilities which the church now has to enable that to happen. Maybe this could incorporate an after-dinner speaker or a musical entertainer.

The sky really is the limit and now that we have such a very beautiful community facility we want to use it and share it with everyone in our community.

“You are always welcome at Fogo Parish Church”