Christ Church Moreton Hall

I entered into Church very young with my parents mainly for the purpose of acknowledging God and Jesus by singing hymns, anthems, psalms, and songs of praise, also prayers. I did this by joining the Bury St Edmunds St James Cathedral Choir as a choir boy, and chorister, under the guidance of the known Choirmaster and Church Organist Harrison Oxley.

Later my father had a career move, and we moved up to Olton, Solihull near Birmingham, I carried on singing in the choir at St Margaret’s Olton and St Alphedges Dorridge, where my choirmaster was a Mr John Searle. Despite all the Church attendance I managed to miss confirmation due to the fact my parents thought I was too young, and thus fell away from regular Church as my Choir days were over.

 However, moving to Thurston after Ipswich, I felt that something was amiss with not being confirmed, I had not truly acknowledged my faith in Jesus. I thus went up to Vicar David Mathers of St Peters Church Thurston and asked him how I could get confirmed. He gave me information about the Alpha Course at Christ Church, which he said would give me a good understanding of what is required for confirmation, and after I would be confirmed by the Bishop of  Dunwich in May. So I attended the Alpha Course and was confirmed, and feel a lot better knowing that I now have commitment in my faith in Jesus in a Church of friendly Christians. Which means faith and life eternal!

I went to Sunday school and church as a child because my friends went but none of our parents went to church.  As a teenager I still went with my friends but that stopped when I left school and went on to a college of art and design.  I believed in Jesus and the Holy Trinity, as taught to me, but He was not my Personal Saviour and I did not devote my time to Him. 

It was when I met Mike and he went to the Baptist Church in Diss that I asked if I could go with him, as I knew he had been a committed Christian for five years.  The men wore suits and the women skirts or dresses on a Sunday for church.  The atmosphere was fairly serious although there were those who joked and made one feel at home.  I started attending the church in January 1998 and in the April during one of the hymns I suddenly had this surge of warmth and intense love that spread upwards through me.  It filled me with an overwhelming feeling that I had never experienced before.  I had said to Mike when I started going to church that I would not have a complete emersion baptism as I was scared of going under water and getting my face completely submerged.  Even in the shower I had to have it adjusted to shoulder height so that the water did not cover my head with water.