MU Strawberry Tea 11th June 2025
This afternoon we held our Annual Strawberry Tea in aid of the Summer of Hope 2025. The money goes to fund women in the Democratic Republic of Congo to help them learn to read and write, grow their own food and basically sustain themselves should they ever have to escape from an abusive relationship or other danger.
The Tea was very well supported, about 40 members from our group, Mossley, Sandbach Heath and Odd Rode, as well as other guests. Members also commented that they do prefer the afternoon meetings now rather than the evening.
Our guest speaker, Revd David Shaw gave us a talk entitled ‘Ministerial Musings’. 
David was first of all a Headteacher, but after taking early retirement, he trained as a minister. His first churches were in the Peak District, and then in the middle of Sheffield, which provided some very interesting experiences. He is very interested in the psychology of why people do what they do, and is obviously a people-watcher, and his Musings were based on real-life stories of members of his various congregations: the lady with the clever dog who bit people when she wasn’t around, but nice as pie when she came back into the room; the lady who was ALWAYS 10 minutes late because she was born 10 minutes late, and carried this on throughout her life, even to her own funeral when her son caused her to be 10 minutes late.
David’s experiences with wedding rehearsals and practising baptisms with the use of his cat, were all very funny and amusing anecdotes. He also ended up doing one minute sermons on Radio Sheffield, and was so successful he was asked back time and time again.
[I would definitely recommend him for giving talks – davidwshaw@btinternet.com – topics include weddings, funerals and also local historical events.]
After David’s talk we settled into our Quiz – ‘famous dates through the years’ – whilst eating scones, strawberries and cream, along with helpings of cake.
It was a very enjoyable afternoon, and I think it was the Brereton ladies (only a table of 4 of them) who won the famous dates through the years Quiz.
The raffle was as successful as ever, and many visited the Bring and Buy stall, helped by a gift of goodies donated by Tesco through Michelle. She had visited the store and explained that we were raising money for the Summer of Hope, and even went back and took them a leaflet to show them. So a particular thank you to Tesco and Michelle!
We couldn’t have managed the meeting without our fantastic team of helpers – Dorothy, Michelle, Maggie, Jean Paton (even though she left us for a better offer later to go and see Robbie Williams in Manchester!), Chris, Val, Maureen, Anne and Judith Hall – thank you all so much for making it such a successful afternoon.
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday July 16th and entitled ‘Making Use of Our Resources’, so please come armed with ideas for us to use for our planning next year..