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When we lived in the fens, my mother would encourage us to go to Sunday School in the fen Methodist Chapel. We would also go to the chapel for an evening service in the summer months. After we moved to Wicken, I would go with my mother to the Wicked Methodist Chapel for the evening service unless I happened to be away cycle racing.
When Denise and I were married, we moved to West Row in Suffolk which is about ten miles from both of our former homes. We did not go to church until our first daughter Claire was born. We decided to have her baptized at St. Peter's church in West Row. This was done as a private service with just friends and family present.
Two years later when Julie was born, I went to see the vicar about having her baptized. Unbeknown to us, there had been a bit of a shakeup in the local Anglican church, and West Row had become part of the Mildenhall Team Ministry. A new vicar, Peter Ballentyne, had been appointed to look after St. Peter's amongst other local churches. I thought that I had gone to the wrong house when he greeted me from behind a beard and underneath a long, bushy mop of hair. Not your average Church of England vicar. In future all baptisms would be part of a family service, so we booked our place at the next family service.
The service made us feel part of the church and we were invited along to the next family service. So began our church life. Gradually we went to more and more services and now we hardly miss any church services or social events.
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