Church News - A very special visitor
Date: Monday, 12 March 2012
Yesterday was a very special day here at Mayfield Salisbury, as we welcomed the Rt Revd David Arnott, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and his wife Rosemary to our morning services. Large numbers attended both services to hear David preach and to meet him and Rosemary afterwards at a delicious congregational lunch.
At the close of the early service, every child was given a commemorative book mark by David, and at the later service he presented Mayfield Salisbury with a beautiful plate which had been especially commissioned at the St Andrews pottery to mark his visits.
In return Rosemary was given a bouquet of flowers, and David a pair of ‘Mayfield Salisbury’ mugs and a copy of the book ‘Thy Story in Glass’ which contains photographs and details of the history of our stained glass windows.
David told us how delighted he was to be back at Mayfield Salisbury which held such happy memories for him for two very special reasons. First, it was here some 44 years ago that he had been a student minister under Bill McDonald from whom he had learnt so much. In fact, David was wearing Bill’s own Moderator’s robes which Bill had gifted to him. 
And, secondly, it was here that he had met his future wife, Rosemary Batchelor, whose parents were Mayfield Salisbury members, and with whom he had since shared close to 40 years of happy marriage.
At the 9.30am Service David spoke about how our Christian faith can be expressed by ‘just being there’ for people in whatever circumstances they find themselves, a fact he illustrated with fascinating examples not only from his parish work but also from his recent travels as Moderator to Afghanistan and Gaza. His sermon at the 10.45am service, which is available in audio form on this web site, was entitled ‘Jesus had no jar’ and drew upon the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. 
Everyone was delighted that David and Rosemary were able to visit us here at Mayfield Salisbury, and wished David every blessing during the rest of his year of office and in the future.
