Particularly our organisations banner, with the garage and church on it,

She asked if we still had the garage!! She also commented on how much work had gone into making the Church family tree banner with all those leaves to embroider, she also remarked on the fish on our Fishers of Men banner so we felt quite pleased that our work had been noticed.

Then in April, Marion Findlater asked, were we up for a challenge? And of course as we are usually prepared to have a go at accepting what is thrown at us we said, what kind of "Challenge"? It was a huge one. Marion's friend Katherine is at the moment President of the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women and that's a mouthful and she came to Hillhouse Church with Marion to explain what she would like us to do. She had a conference arranged in Erskine Bridge Hotel on May 19th to 23rd and there were to be workshops each day as well as various study groups and she would like us to do a Banner workshop on one of the days.

There would be women coming from Central Europe, Eastern Europe Canada and various places and we would show them how to go about making banners and falls.After we got our breath back at the thought of it, everyone said "yes".

We had then to plan out what and how we would arrange this, so we worked on the idea that our small Peace and Hope banners would probably be the most suitable for the ladies to try.

We then had to cut a number of pieces of fabric to the size we would need and the cut out the candles, doves , letters and other elements that you could use to make up banners.

We took all our photographs of the church banners, books that we keep for designs, Scissors, threads, pins and needles and even fabric paint!! Armed with all this lot we set off,-- with Marion as one driver and Liz McLaughlan the other -- at 8am (and that is above and beyond the call of duty") on May 21st to drive to Erskine. When we arrived at the hotel, here were all these women, around the 200 mark all in black t-shirts and skirts and trousers the logo on the shirts read "We wear black on Thursdays" we felt we stood out like a sore thumb in our bright clothing. The first hour was a Praise Service, they then went on to their study groups and at 11-15 the workshops started.

Well, that was something else again, there were so many women wanting to know about banners we quickly realised we weren't going to have a banner for everyone. They were very friendly and some of them doubled up and worked together. Here we were running around helping where we could even Liz was doing her bit while Marion was going around taking pictures of it all. Some were engrossed in the books, some were even taking photographs of our photographs! Letters were being cut out and stitched on, everyone was excitedly making something and all the little banners were finished. So if you are ever in Sierra Leone, Gambia,Serbia and even various parts of England you might just see a replica of our church banners hanging on a wall, they all wanted to take them home.

My own personal and humbling experience was with the lady from Serbia who was cutting out letters and shapes and asked could she take the pieces of fabric home with her, she was so happy when I said she could and I passed on lots of pieces of different colours and fabrics to her and you would have thought I'd given her something wonderful. To her it was, her English friend said that was a great gift for her to receive.We take all these things for granted and probably throw away things too readily.So we were on a learning curve too.

After the workshop we were given lunch and then we went on a coach tour to Inverary, all the ladies were so happy to see the lovely scenery and especially the lochs and of course Marion being Marion got our group all prepared for a sing song. As soon as Loch Lomond came into view -yes you've guessed it we all had to sing_ "Ye'll tak the High Road and I'll tak the Low road" and some of the visitors joined in, a good time was had by all. We arrived back at the hotel at 6-30 and left for home a very happy group, feeling we had had a great rapport with all the ladies who had come to the workshop and hopefully that they went back home happy with the pieces that they had made.

So as I said at the beginning, exciting and interesting things happen to the Banner Group, so if you are looking for a challenge you know where we are.

Jean