Church Garden Party 2008

On Friday evening the second annual Great British Garden Party was held in Bucharest in the beautiful settings of Aleea Alexandru. After ten days of unbroken sunshine and despite warnings of imminent storms, the sun shone on both the righteous and the unrighteous and a very large number of friends of the Church of the Resurrection attended and helped to raise over 5000 euros to support the mission of the Anglican church in Romania.

Preparations over the previous days had been frenetic and we waited anxiously to see what would go wrong on the day! Fortunately, the only problem was one of interpretation with our very kind sponsors, Metro, who provided all of the food for the evening. Next year we will know to ask for the different ingredients of the salad seperately, rattr than just for "salad" (if you know some Romanian, you may be aware that the Romanian word for lettuce is salat), and that is exactly what we got-20 euros worth of salat, in various forms and varieties-but all lettuce! We survived, and every guest was invited to take home as much lettuce/salat as they could use at the end of the evening!

All of our guests enjoyed a wonderful barbecue grill, washed down with cold draft beer or a variety of Romanian wines. For dessert there was Dutch pancakes and cheese. For entertainment for the children there was face painting and balloons, and our funds were bolstered by an auctions of gifts as well as a mega raffle. By the time the final guests left the sun had well and truly set on a wonderful and successful evening. Thank you to everyone for their support for the eveeng in many different ways, and in particularto our Chaplain, Martin Jacques, for the enormous and largely anonymous work that he put in to ensure that the Party was so well organuised.

and a very special dinner party

Following the evensong service; HM Ambassador to Bucharest, His Excellency Robin Barnett, and his wife Tesca hosted a dinner party in honour of Bishop David's visit to Bucharest. Present at the dinner, as well as representatives of the Church of the Resurrection, were guests from the Orthodox Church, Greek Catholic Church, and Armenian Church in Romania.

Over dinner, many stories were shared about life in Bucharest and in particular the life of the Christian churches in Bucharest over the last 40 years and through these conversations it emerged the the Archbishop of the Armenian Church in Romania has served in Bucharest for over 50 years, and so was here already when Bishop David was Chaplain at the Church of the Resurrection.

The food was wonderful and the company and conversation outstanding. All in all, a perfect way to conclude the visit of our former chaplain. Bishop David, we are waiting for you to return on your next visit!

A very special evensong.................

On Thursday evening we held a very special evensong in the Church of the Resurrection with Bishop david Hope as our Visiting Preacher and President. Even though it was a working day and Bucharest traffic was its usual 6pm chaos a large congregation gathered and we were privileged to listen to an insprired homily from Bishop David on giving thanks for what we have in our lives through living our lives for God.

It was a strange feeling to understand that we were worshipping God in the very same church were Bishop David had presided as Resident Chaplain so many years ago.

Queen's Birthday Party in Bucharest

On June 18th the Official Birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was celebrated in Bucharest. One of the guests of honour was Bishop David Hope, who was from 1967-68 Chaplain of the Church of the Resurrection in Bucharest, and then later Archbishop of York. Now enjoying a very active retirement, Bishop Hope is now one of the Assistant Bishops in the Diocese in Europe and in this way maintains his links with and interest in the life of our church in Romania.

For three days we were honoured to have Bishop David with us in Bucharest and in this time he increased our understanding of what life was really like in Bucharest some 40 years ago.

On the Tuesday evening members of the church council were invited to share a barbecue with Bishop David in the delightful gardens of Dieter Stanzeleit and then on Wednesday the QBP was held in the wonderful location of the Museum of Contemporary Art that is located within the Palace of Parliament.