We have had another busy couple of days here.
My parents, other brother and my granny (my mum's mum) all came down on Saturday. It is the first time my granny has been off the island in nearly 6 years!
Here she is with my younger brother (standing) and her seven great-grandsons. (She has two great grand-daughters too, my cousin's girls, who live down south)
The reason she has made the momentous journey is that the church's annual General Assembly is on all this week down here, and my dad has been elected to be the Moderator. The Moderator changes each year, is chosen by the other ministers and has usually been in the ministry for around 25 years or so. He is the chairman for the Assembly, where various reports are given of work done in the church over the last year, mission reports and other sorts of minutae of business.
The Assembly starts on Monday evening with an address given by the previous year's Moderator, and then the new Moderator takes the chair. The Moderator's family have a reserved seat right at the front of the church. Not ideal when you have four boys to keep still! Plus my brother's three boys! They all behaved impeccably, thankfully.
After all this there is a reception for those taking part in the Assembly and the guests of the Moderator. It was lovely to see a good number of people from my dad's congregation had made the journey down to share the occasion with him.
The reception was held in the rather grand Edinburgh City Chambers.
After some food there were a few speeches given by people chosen by my dad. Once again, all the boys behaved well, despite their late night.
James did his usual expert job of keeping Alasdair entertained....
...and I think they may have broken a few hearts with how handsome they looked!
More information about the Assembly can be found here.
I've been forgetting to add this the last week or two....
Gaelic word of the day:
eaglais (egg-leesh) - church
an Eaglais Shaor na h-Alba (an egg-leesh hiir na h-alaba) - the Free Church of Scotland
