Visit to Colbitz : August 20th – 24th 2004

A few impressions from Hugh and Virginia Williams

First of all we must pass on to all at St Thomas’s the very warm greetings sent with us from our friends in Colbitz.

This was our first visit to Colbitz in the Diocese of Magdeburg, a Diocese that is in partnership with the Diocese of Worcester. For forty years Colbitz was in the former East Germany and behind “the Wall” for over 25 years. We travelled with Joy Baylis and Joy Totney both of whom had been at least twice before. This is just a short article to highlight a few impressions. We all hope to share more of the visit with the congregation , perhaps one evening early in the new year.

For us it was a very special visit abroad. We saw friends again who had visited us at St Thomas’s last May and we greatly enjoyed the warm hospitality that Siegfried and Dorothea Horn offered us. We really felt that our partnership with Colbitz is growing deeper with personal friendships and a sharing of worship, faith and purpose. Hugh spoke no German at the beginning of the week-end but that did not stop him enjoying the welcome and friendship of everyone in the Colbitz parish. By the end of the week-end he was quite prepared to try out the occasional German phrase or even whole sentence !

On the Saturday evening we attended a special service in the parish church, a service for the local young children who were starting school for the first time. Starting school in Germany is a big event marked by family parties. It was great to see a number of families coming to this evening service and Gaby and Dieter involved the youngsters in the service. It was quite moving to sing “He’s got the whole world in his hands” in German along with the children and their parents!

Our friends in Colbitz arranged some very interesting visits , enjoyable social get-togethers, times of worship and times when we could learn more from each other about what concerns us as Christians both at home and abroad. Dieter and Gaby gave a presentation about their churches’ 20 year old link with a school in Tanzania and we hope to share that presentation with the congregation at some stage. There are already some photographs of the school and its pupils in the South Porch.

We were taken to see the border crossing on the road from Hanover to Berlin : this had a photographic display of key events in East Germany from 1948 onwards. We also visited a section of the “wall” which was actually made up of at least 4 areas of barrier to prevent people leaving : the high wall, a mined area, an alarmed area and a fenced pathway patrolled by dogs – all overseen by a watchtower. It is so easy to forget that up to 15 years ago people in East Germany had to apply for special permission to visit relatives in the West and that they were not allowed to take their children with them.

So we had a lot of fun, learnt a lot about Germany past and present, worshipped together and laughed as we all tried to understand each others German and English. Most of all it was good to be building a very friendly partnership!