Pouring with rain and with a strong wind as a very late cold front has suddenly arrived in the last day or two bringing with it some horrible weather and a return to winter temperatures ~ hey, we’re used to it by now, but this winter seems far from over, and it’s almost April! But as you’ll see from the photos below, some of our hardy students are still walking around in T-shirts saying they can’t understand what all the fuss is about!

Our annual Maundy Thursday service was last night, and Thursday evening is also the evening when our St. John’s University student fellowship meets, usually about 30 of them. Actually they meet every evening for different activities, but their main gathering is on Thursdays. It’s open to any of our students, and it seems that about half of those who come are already Christians and half not. Some are interested in the Christian faith, some would really like to be baptised but too scared to ask their parents, others have asked and their parents say no, others are waiting until they they reach their final year hoping their parents will come round in the meantime.  But there’s also many who are not interested, they’re here because they like the friendship and fun. Everyone’s welcome! But they all volunteered in equal numbers for the foot-washing, either to have their feet washed or to carry water and arrange the towels and bowls.

So we had 12 volunteers for foot-washing, 11 of them students from our student fellowship, plus Yu-lin who works with the students in our chaplaincy office ~ and 4 foot-washers, our 2 clergy, one churchwarden and Shu-Jing who also works with the students in our chaplaincy office….

One of our students, Mei-han is preparing for her baptism on Easter Eve, she had her feet washed by our churchwarden.  After the foot-washing, we had communion, and at the end of the service, prepared the church for Good Friday ~ cleared the altar and covered the crosses with black cloth, and then read Psalm 22 in a darkened church….

Psalm 22:1 ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

And so we pause to remember the last evening and last night of Jesus’ life on earth…

PS Turns out that the reason why the girls were all smiling in the foot-washing photos was because the water was freezing cold, and they’d mostly put both feet in the water together, hence their ‘grin and bear it’ kind of expressions!