St Catherine's at the Diocesan Festival

On the last Saturday of September, hundreds of people from across the diocese converged on the Merthyr leisure centre for our Diocesan Festival. St Catherine's was well represented: Esther and Trish face painted all day in the cafe, and Marcus had the jazz quartet playing for an hour in the morning.

It was a great success, with everyone able to see all kinds of activities happening from all kinds of churches. The jazz band was hugely enjoyed by many people, and will be appearing again soon at our Harvest Supper!

St Caths Plus

St Caths Plus is a new pilot project we have started this autumn to begin daytime groups for retired people in Pontypridd. There are free craft groups and keep fit groups so far, on Thursday and Friday mornings, and this is a photo of our first lunch, which is an initiative we hope to run at very low costs fortnightly through this term. As you can see, the first lunch was an extraordinary success - as well it might be, with our very own Lesley Wilson heading up the catering team!

St Caths Plus is for anyone who is retired and wants to do something extra - to spend time with friends, to meet new people, to try something new. We will have book clubs, afternoon concerts and much more coming over the weeks ahead. We believe that somethings get better with age - people being one of those things. And that God loves everyone, so we will try to do something for everyone.

When we say they church is a family, we don't mean "it's for families" - we mean it is a family, a place where everyone has a place because everyone is loved. And if you want to try that out, but aren't sure about all the faith stuff that comes with a Sunday, or just want to come along to something that's going on & sounds interesting - St Caths Plus might well be the place for you. We are here to make life better: and hope that as we get these groups and activities going, many older folk in our community will discover something extra, a little added something - a Plus in life - that makes all the difference.

Esther Sowerby is heading up the project, and she can be reached by email on plus@st-caths.org.

PodCaths on the BBC

As we revealed last week, Kate Scott-Williams from BBC Radio Wales came back to us & spent Wednesday afternoon recording a piece for "Good Morning Wales" about our PodCaths podcast.

Well, you can now click here for the BBC webpage about it, and on that page you can listen to Kate's story and hear what she found out.

As well as meeting the group, and listening to us as we recorded our second podcast (now on iTunes - though as of today it's the only one there as we seem to have lost the first one, so don't get too confused!) she interviewed Stewart and Joyce, and then she & Gill Tuck took a recording to John Murphy in his home to get his reaction. He sounds lovely.

A further dimension was added as Chris Berryman spoke with Kate via Skype to give his view; Chris lives in Orlando, and heard us on the web. It's amazing how far a podcast can go...

So: if you've had a listen, let us know how you think it's going. We are enjoying doing it - when we record we are still a bit "well behaved", but I think soon we'll get the hang of it and then... Goodness only knows what will happen.

And maybe Matt will even emerge from under the table!