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  What with one thing and another I've driven this road, between Dunedin and Rolleston, 5 times in the last fortnight. It's becoming quite familiar. Travelling in the early morning I pass the wetlands at Waitati. just after Blueskin Bay. The Moeraki boulders are always worth a stop... ...as is Oamaru in the hour after sunrise.

photo (c) Phil Clark 2014 In Oamaru our diocese has a couple of strong congregations, but the rural churches making up the rest of the North Eastern corner of our patch are small. Over the past few weeks they have come together to plan this morning's regional event and the result of the hard work involved was readily apparent today. What an event they put on! We met at St. John's Waikouaiti, the first church built in the Diocese of Dunedin. A large gazebo had been erected and fitted out with a sound system and the necessities for a Eucharist. Around the tent were a couple of hundred chairs and behind it was the lagoon: a beautiful still and stilling backdrop. We arrived in time to walk the 1 km or so from the main road to the church accompanied by about a dozen people. In the parish hall coffee and tea and the customary well filled tables were waiting. People arrived and chatted and moved slowly over to the gazebo. The service was due to start at 11:00 but the old double...

Sundays. I look forward to them. They usually start with a lengthy drive in the dark, followed by putting on my impressive clobber in a tiny vestry which somehow missed the last three of the church's restoration projects, and a service or two, then a pot luck lunch and a chat with some very nice people. Yesterday it was Oamaru . The various parishes of North Otago met in St. Mary's for a combined service. Although I have been to St. Mary's a few times I still managed to drive past it; it is not a building which dominates its surroundings in the way St. Luke's does at the other end of town and I was obviously daydreaming as I sailed right on by. Still, I arrived, changed, preached and celebrated, ate and talked. The church was full, and I think the congregation was fairly representative of our diocese. There were some children and some young adults, but mostly the congregation was of about my age, or perhaps, dare I say it, even slightly older. There was a great sense ...