We were all going to burn our last year's palm crosses on Ash Wednesday evening in Snaith Priory, the mother church of our team parish, and use them for the imposition of ashes. A certain tragic and horrific incident that morning in Great Heck, which is also in our parish changed the complexion of the service a little, in that we didn't do the ashes, and the Bishop of Doncaster came to lead the service. We still had a Eucharist service and we sang "40 Days and 40 Nights" and "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" among others. There were 5 hymns in all that night, but I can only remember 2 of them. We are fairly traditional in our Lenten hymns and the majority are from Ancient and Modern (New Standard).

Our weekly Lent activities this year are services of Holy Communion on Wednesday evenings, led by different members of the clergy team, each speaking on key figures from the Passion and visiting a different church in our parish each week with each new figure and speaker. Our church in Hensall is the first, and our Rector is starting the ball rolling with a talk on Judas! With all the turmoil and sorrow we have had in the last few days he has not as yet been able to prepare anything and he says it may be totally "off the cuff"! He is a past master at this, although he professes to find it hard to get his head round Judas at the moment.

The best thing I ever did for Lent was about 4 years ago when I took on a sponsorship of a little girl in Uganda. She is delightful, and has now started to write a little in English (she's nearly 10).

Andrea