Our Lent Journey Together Begins...

This week we began our Lent Journey together on the lead up to Easter.

The Faith Life Group which is chaired by Hilary and also includes Holly, Ania, Erika, Sylwia and Catherine who are representatives from each area of the community have organised several events in order for us to mark each stage in the lead up to Easter.

The first event happened on Shrove Tuesday also known as Pancake Day or Mardi Gras. The Community came together at The Workshops to enjoy a big helping of pancakes with some lovely fillings! Each house prepared the pancakes which seemed to be a lot of fun - plenty of  pancake tossing was involved! The Workshops provided teas and coffees and also many fillings to cater to everyone's favourite flavours.

During the gathering, Hilary took the opportunity to gather everyone around and introduce them to 'Godly Play'. Godly Play is a new more gentle way to learn and worship. It helps people to understand and explore the stories of God and his people, the stories Jesus told and make connections between the stories and our worship. This is done by using handcrafted objects made either from wood or felt which come with each story in order to be a visual representative to those in the community who may struggle with longer spiels.

If you would like to look further into the Godly Play model you can log onto: http://www.godlyplay.org.uk/.

The second of our events was a service led by Bishop Mark in Braerannoch for Ash Wednesday. In Bishop Mark's service he explained about the celebration of Lent which is held on the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. He was assisted by our very own Mark Mitchell to place Ash crosses over everyone's forehead which Mark thoroughly enjoyed.

We as a community will be following the 'Faces of Easter' for the next 6-7 weeks and will continue with our Godly Play stories and mimes to aid us. 

Our next event will be our Passover Meal and Footwashing Liturgy in Ness Bank Church on the 5th of April.

We hope to see many of you there!

Our Atlanta Delegates...

As some of you may know the L'Arche Inverness delegates for the International General Assembly in Atlanta have now been confirmed as Holly Hiles and Tracey O'Mara.

The L'Arche International General Assembly runs only every four years and is going to be held on June 1st - 10th in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This is an important meeting for all L'Arche communities throughout the world as it gives all the delegates an opportunity to:

• Experience many different languages, religion/ cultures

and encounter celebrations of work and discovery.

This meeting is a very important part of our community's commitment & belonging to L'Arche International. For those who may not know where Atlanta is; there is a map below with Atlanta marked with a red star! 

As you can see Holly and Tracey will be travelling many, many miles away...

This meeting will mark an important time of transition for the International Federation as it will be a reviewing the years past and the management, adopt a new mandate, appoint new leadership and board members as well as establishing it's new constitution.

Throughout the 10 days there will be time for the delegates to meet each other and also interact with people and places in Atlanta - the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr - the youngest man to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize!



So... Last week our community held a gathering in Braerannoch to begin gathering the information for our delegates (Holly and Tracey) to present at the meeting. Holly prepared a very interesting and accessible slideshow presentation for all of us to ponder over which led to the following questions:

1. What makes you happy in L'Arche?
2. What is the gift of L'Arche around the world?
3. Please draw or paint what is good in L'Arche?

We as a community hope now to gather enough feedback to begin the preparations for the meeting. We are also going to begin fundraising for part of this trip, so if anyone would like to help or donate money - please contact Amy/ Holly our main office on 01463 239615.

A Night with the Girls and Boys...

What better way to have time to relax and get to know the others you live with than to have a night away together for some male/ female bonding.

Last year, some of the ladies from Grianan, Saorsa, Braerannoch and The Workshops planned a lovely pampering night together. This included lots of face masks, food and of course . . . GIGGLING!

As you can see above - Kirsty, Rebecca and Amy were all involved in the face mask fun and frolics. However, Fiona DJ on the other hand took some more persuading but looked just a beautiful!!

Tracey and Holly seemed to have the most fun of all, with their masks. Holly's mask was heated which was a good laugh to watch as it started to tingle! Tracey enjoyed all the lovely snacks and was not worried to get stuck in with the face masks which ended up all over the place!

AND...

Not to be out-done the MacTalla boy's headed to Findhorn to stay in a Caravan overnight for their very own Boy's Night. Anne drove the boys out to the beautiful village of Findhorn for the night.

 As you can tell from the photographs both Kevin and Mark thoroughly enjoyed themselves as they had plenty of food and drinks to occupy themselves!The boy's also enjoyed walks on the beach in the lovely warmish scottish weather!

We hope that you enjoy all our photographs and we will continue to update on all our other trips and adventures!