NEWSHEET 2020

Saturday 1st August

THE CORONA VIRUS RESTRICTIONS HAVE LED TO ALL PUBLIC CHURCH GATHERINGS BEING CANCELLED
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DURING THIS PERIOD WE WILL PRODUCE A NEWSSHEET EACH SATURDAY TO
HELP PEOPLE KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THE CHURCH COMMUNITY.

COMMEMORATIVE SCIO EDITION

Sunday Service
Ian continues to lead our studies in the book of Acts this week focusing
on the Church in Antioch: chapter 11: 19 through to chapter 12:24.
We will also share communion at this service.

Please note that the new zoom link for all church activities is
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7881518854?pwd=Zmx4Ni9zR2tqMEMvQ
nBaNTBvWDFudz09 Meeting ID remains 788-151-8854. New
password: 123456.

1
The Week Ahead
2 – 8 AUGUST

SUNDAY
11.00 worship

MONDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation

TUESDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation

WEDNESDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation
3.00 tea @ 3

THURSDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation
7.00 Building Project Group

FRIDAY
12.00 prayer & meditation
4.30 Diaconate

SATURDAY
9.00 prayer meeting

2
DIACONATE PAGE

Happy SCIO Day!

Today marks the day Peebles Baptist Church
becomes a Scottish Charitable Incorporated
Organisation. In itself not much of a big
deal, but quite significant in other respects,
not least that it now gives us access to loan
funding available from the Baptist Union of Scotland.

Lockdown Update
Our best judgement in the light of the information available locally
and nationally is that it will not be possible for us to meet together
in a shared physical space for at least a number of months. We will
continue in the meantime with a programme of weekly events via
zoom which we week to revise and refresh over the few weeks.

Annual General Meeting 2020

As it remains unclear when we will be able to meet again physically we
have decided that we should reschedule the AGM to take place via
zoom. Members should note therefore that the date of the
rescheduled meeting is Wednesday 30th September.

Diaconate Elections
In tandem with the new arrangements for the AGM, the process for
the election of Deacons has now begun. A list of members eligible
for nomination as Deacons is being made available to members today.

Income for June

General Income for June: £2,734.17
Average monthly Income (last 12 months): £3,555.14
Average monthly Expenditure (last 12 months): £3,219.25.
Building Fund income for June: £2,750
Building Fund Loan repayment income: £534.16

3
MEMORABLE PEOPLE
Iain Gibson

Dear Brother or Sister (but particularly sisters!),

You have to forgive me.
No, really, you do have to forgive me!
They say that confession is good for the soul and so I have to make a
confession. Let’s hope it meets with your forgiveness!
I had thought that it might be helpful to write a little series giving
background to some Christians who have made a huge impact in
furthering the Kingdom of God. What lessons might they teach us? It
would be a series about people whose names are familiar but whose
lives may be less so. As I thought further about it the names began to
trip off my tongue – Luther, Knox, Spurgeon, Bonhoeffer, etc; it
seemed certain that I would be spoilt for choice.
And so I started to type. And here comes the confession.
I typed the heading for the first instalment: “Great men of the faith”.
In my defence, as soon as I typed it I thought: that must be wrong!
Why did I only type “men”? (NB: while I am sure that the
saying “Behind every great man there is a great woman” has much
truth to it, this is far from satisfactory as a reason for my error!).
Sadly, it is usually the work of men which dominates the record of our
Christian heritage and, while I definitely do not wish to get into a
gender equality debate, I resolved that in this mini-series I would
endeavour to mention the impact made by some of both sexes.
So, that’s what I will try to do – in a short series re-titled “Memorable
People”.
One last word of introduction. It was never my intention in this series
to go all the way back 2,000 years; rather, I wanted to consider people
from the last few hundred years. However, if you’re interested in
learning about some of the Christian women who made major
contributions in the early years of our faith then take a look at this
website: https://www.ancient.eu/article/1409/ten-should-be-famous-
women-of-early-christianity/.

4
So, today we will start our mini-series with a look at someone who I
think was utterly amazing: Mother Teresa.

What can we learn from her life?

Born in 1910, Mother Teresa was an Albanian-Indian, born and raised in
Skopje (North Macedonia); according to a biography by Joan Graff
Clucas, she was fascinated as a child by stories of the lives of
missionaries and their service in Bengal and, by the age of 12, she was
convinced that she should commit herself to religious life. She left
home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loretto in Ireland; here, she
would learn English with the view of becoming a missionary.
She never saw her mother or her sister again.
She arrived in Darjeeling in 1929, where she learned Bengali and
taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent, later moving to be a
teacher at the Loreto convent school in Calcutta. She served there for
nearly twenty years and was appointed its headmistress in 1944.
However, although she enjoyed teaching at the school, she was
increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.
In September 1946, she experienced what she later described as "the
call within the call":

5
 "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among
them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."
She began missionary work with the poor in 1948, founding a school in
Calcutta before she began tending to the poor and hungry. She wrote
in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulty. With no
income, she begged for food and supplies and experienced doubt,
loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life
during these early months. On 7 October 1950, Teresa received Vatican
permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the
Missionaries of Charity (isn’t that a great name?). In her words, it
would
care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind,
the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for
throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society
and are shunned by everyone".
In 1952, she opened her first hospice with help from Calcutta officials.
She then opened her first hospice for those with leprosy and over
time The Missionaries of Charity established leprosy-outreach clinics
throughout Calcutta, providing medication and food. The Missionaries
of Charity also took in an increasing number of homeless children and
in 1955 she opened a children’s home.
The diocesan congregation began to attract recruits and donations, and
by the 1960s it had opened hospices, orphanages and leper houses
throughout India. She then expanded the congregation abroad,
opening a house in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Houses
followed in Italy (Rome), Tanzania and Austria in 1968, and during the
1970s the congregation opened houses and foundations in the United
States and dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.
By 1997, the 13-member Calcutta congregation had grown to more
than 4,000 sisters who managed orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity
centers worldwide, caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged,
alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and
famine. By 2007, the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 450
brothers and 5,000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions,
schools and shelters in 120 countries.

6
Mother Teresa died in 1997, having had heart problems and suffered
from malaria, but the work of the Missionaries of Charity continues.
Some little known facts about Mother Teresa.
• At the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982, she rescued 37
children trapped in a front-line hospital by brokering a temporary
cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas.

• When she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 "for work
undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress,
which also constitutes a threat to peace", she refused the
conventional ceremonial banquet for laureates, asking that its
$192,000 cost be given to the poor in India.

• She received a state funeral from the Indian government.

• Analysing her deeds and achievements, Pope John Paul II said:

"Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to
place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in
prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy
Face, his Sacred Heart.”
• Mother Teresa often commented that the spiritual poverty of the
west was harder to remove than the material poverty of the east.
“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the
hunger for bread.”
• She experienced periods of spiritual dryness.
“Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but
emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain.”

• She prayed this prayer on a daily basis:

“Dear Jesus, help me to spread Thy fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Thy spirit and love. Penetrate and possess my
whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of
Thine. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come
in contact with may feel Thy presence in my soul. Let them look
up and see no longer me but only Jesus. Stay with me and then I
shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to
others. Amen”

7
What can we learn from her life?
Here’s a few thoughts:

• Listen for God to speak to us and act in obedience when He does.

• Persevere when doubts set in and when God seems far away.

• Time in prayer is time well spent.

• “Blessed is he who is generous to the poor.”, Proverbs 14:21

GARDEN PHOTOS by LINDSEY GRAY

8
SCIO: the untold story
from our special correspondent
Mystery today surrounds the whereabouts of two non-conformists
embroiled in a scandal that appears to link the regulation of Scottish
charities with the country’s highest levels of professional football
administration.
Alan Holloway (59) and John Dalrymple (23) have for many years
collaborated in a campaign to have the Baptist Church of Peebles
recognised by the Scottish Charities Regulator (OSCR) as a SCIO (Skinny
Cappucino-Infused Organisation). Sources close to Holloway and
Dalrymple indicate their marathon campaign was particularly fraught,
beset at every stage by a multitude of cross-border difficulties and
credible suspicions of smoking cessation, event mismanagement, land
registration anomalies, and interference from the UVA. Most recently,
when it seemed that success was within reach, an unexpected
infestation of the deadly “bug-bee” insect threatened to devour all
preparatory paperwork.
Happily for Holloway and Dalrymple all
obstacles were nonetheless finally overcome
in mid-July and the regulator confirmed that
the church would be recognised as a SCIO
with effect from today, 1st August, 2020. It is
believed that they had planned a celebratory
confirmation-as-holograph supper to mark the
event at a select location in Port Dundas. HOLLOWAY IN HAPPIER TIMES

However, in fresh allegations that have rocked football aficionadas and

anabaptists alike it has now emerged that SCIO status may only have
been granted to Holloway and Dalrymple in exchange for their
agreement to participate in the covid-related relegations of their
favoured football teams from their respective divisions of the
Professional Football League (PiFLe). It is believed that under duress
from OSCR and the SFA they agreed to concoct evidence of Hungarian
mafia infiltration of the highest reaches of Edinburgh society, fatally
damaging the case taken jointly to the court of appeal by Partick
Thistle (not for nothing known as the Maryhill Magyars) and the Heart
of Midlothian (a club famously sponsored by Walter Scott).

9
With Stranraer FC the only remaining club affected by the Scottish
football’s maladministrative mismanagement,
Dalrymple’s family connections to that town (via an
extended lineage including the nefarious master of
Stair Park, and his late train-driving uncle, Hugh)
have merely lent weight to the conspiracy theory in
which Holloway and Dalrymple are now totally
immersed. DALRYMPLE (BUDAPEST CCTV)

A spokesperson for Peebles Rovers declined to comment.

Keeping in touch

Contact Points During Lockdown

• pastoral matters should be referred to the pastor, Ian Gray

o 01721 729101/07881 518854
o pastor@peeblesbaptistchurch.org
o 97Whitehaugh Park, Peebles, EH45 9DB
• we can post news updates on our facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/PeeblesBaptistChurch/
• we can continue to use our two PBC what’s app groups: PBC Prayer
Group and What’s On in PBC.

Preaching Calendar
• 02 Aug Ian Gray
Acts 11:19 – 12:24
• 09 Aug John Dalrymple
Acts 12:25 - 13:52
• 16 Aug Alan Packer
• 23 Aug Mo Gibbs
Acts 14

10
The A-Z of Recipes for Restricted Times
Our sojourn in the gastronomic wilderness of lockdown this week
reaches the letter O. And what better way of marking SCIO day than
celebrating the SCIO’s anagrammatic cousin the Ocsi, that range of
boneless fish dishes made famous by Poles home and abroad over the
centuries. We were delighted this week when the recipe for this sub-
continental variant of the Ocsi - the Boneless Fish Kabab - dropped
through the letter box, its origins anonymous save for the postmark
“Ambrosia”. Not to be confused with its sweet and sour variant the
oxymoron [ocsi-mo-ron in the dialect of Kracow] (for so long the
signature dish at the Bellshill Hilton) this alchemist’s special is sure to
satisfy even the most jaded palettes.
ingredients
• fish - 500 gm
• Lemon juice - 1 tbsp
• Besan - 1 cup
• Ginger paste - 1tbsp
• Garlic paste - 1 tbsp
• Green chili paste - 1/2 tbsp
• Crushed whole dhania - 1/2 cup
• Turmeric powder - 1/4 tbsp
• Zeera powder - 1 tbsp
• Garam Masala - 1/2 tbsp
• Chopped coriander - 1 cup JADED PALLETS

• Chopped onion - 1 cup

• Salt - as per taste
• Oil - for frying

11
Method
• Wash and dry fish first. Then take a marination bowl, add fish,
salt and lemon juice. Mix it well.
• Heat the wok with oil. Now shallow fry the fish. When it’s
cooldown, take out boneless part from it.
• In a bowl put these boneless fish and crushed it. Now add ginger
paste, garlic paste, green chili paste, crushed whole dhania,
turmeric powder, jeera powder, garam masala, salt, and
chopped coriander. Mix it well. Keep aside for 30 minutes.
• Now add besan and chopped onion. Mix it well.
• Now, again heat oil in a wok, deep fry roughly in a small portion,
until each kebab becomes golden and crispy.
• Serve hot with tomato sauce and enjoy it with your loved ones.

Building Up the Fellowship

Pastoral Ministry
On 16th July a group of folks got together to think and pray about the
way forward in pastoral ministry. Further discussions and efforts to
learn from others elsewhere are planned for the next few week.
In the meantime, we will continue to strengthen the scheme
introduced at the beginning of lockdown whereby each of us has an
informal link to another person in the fellowship.
Making Disciples
We are continuing to make preparations to begin work under the
direction of the Navigators organisation designed to make us better
equip us “to make disciples”. Please pray for guidance and inspiration
as we take this on to the next stage with Jan McCuin (UK Church
Ministries Coordinator).

12
Building Fund
Confirmation of the full list of Scottish Baptist Churches which have
responded so generously to our recent building project appeal:
Aberdeen Christian Fellowship £500
Bo’ness Baptist Church £300
Cornton Baptist Church £200
Dedridge Baptist Church £200
Ellon Baptist Church £600
Greenock Baptist Church £100
Gourock Baptist Church £200
Islay Baptist Church £200
Lossiemouth Baptist Church £500
Perth Baptist Church £500
Peterhead Baptist Church £500
Pollok Baptist Church £100
St Mary’s Community Church, Dundee £100

Margaret Moore Christine Drummond

13
 as told to @JimmyFer1077650 and Iain Gibson

My car broke down.

I lifted the bonnet and saw a bat sitting on the engine.
He said 'Hello sir, you’re a very handsome man.
And very nicely dressed too'
I could see the problem.
Bat flattery.
The teacher is trying to help Jonny with his arithmetic.
Teacher: “Jonny, if I gave you 2 cats and another 2 cats and
another 2, how many cats would you have?"
Jonny: "Seven."
Teacher: "No, listen carefully now Jonny... If I gave you two cats,
and another two cats and another two, how many would you have?"
Jonny: "Seven."
Teacher: "Let me put it to you differently. If I gave you two apples,
and another two apples and another two, how many would you
have?"
Jonny: "Six."
Teacher: “Good Jonny, you’ve got it now. Now, back to the cats. If I
gave you two cats, and another two cats and another two, how
many would you have?"
Jonny: "Seven!”
Teacher, now very frustrated: "Jonny, where on earth are you
getting seven from?!"
Jonny: "I've already got a cat!"

14
Jonah (part one)1
by Bill Speirs
A story, as my grannie often said, is no better than a shopping list
unless it tells something more. Some said she stretched it too far: but
a famous writer agreed; there is no fiction, she maintained, but every
piece of story telling is attached to reality, like a cobweb to a wall:
however lightly, something of the teller is in the tale.
Well, I am the teller of this tale: and there, before me on the mantle
piece, is another piece of the web, Peggy PD149, as spick and span as
the day she sailed from her commissioning in Aberdeen, under
command of Dooey Strachan, for her home port. Dooey, of course,
was not his birth name, for fishermen in those days always had a by-
name, partly because it suited then (Dooey’s shore interest was
homing pigeons) partly to distinguish amongst the many Johns, and
secretly to deceive the sea spirits that threatened the lives of such
that go down to the sea in ships, especially fishermen. So they sailed
in disguise in craft bearing a woman’s name, their mother’s or
sweethearts.
And Dooey was going to marry Peggy.
Peggy PD149 was dressed overall
when she passed through the
huge granite pillars of the outer
bay and up to the Quaenie
harbour to a welcome at the
inner quay.
She sails now, as clean and
proud, but in a bottle, proudly
braving plaster waves as she did
in her thirty years of work since
1907, one of the first steam drifters that changed the small town into a
main centre of the herring industry.

1
Margaret Blyth noticed a reference to Jonah in a recent newsletter (Lionel’s sermon) and sent us for our
enjoyment, a copy of a story written by her dad, and former member of our church, the late Rev. Bill Speirs. It
will be serialised here in four parts.

15
She is long since gone to the breakers yard in dull grey, for in was she
was enlisted as a mine sweeper: and her crew is gone too, to their rest
at sea or ashore.
And the reason she rests on my mantle piece is because, no matter
how, I have a slight connection – slight as the spider’s web – with
Dooey’s family.

I was standing on the same quay, dressed in overalls, thick scarf,

gumboots and cloth cap, waiting for Jim to “take me out for a night”
in Bluebell. Everyone knew who, or rather what, I was – a college lad
going for the ministry and not welcome at sea, being a Jonah.

https://peeblesbaptistchurch.org/

16