About Her: Hilary Hopwood

This week we hear from Hilary Hopwood, a retired French teacher in the North of England. Her school was one of the first nationally to gain the International Schools Award, and she was invited by the British Council to help pioneer this award in India, and to serve on their adjudication panels for both the international School Award and the Global Curriculum Award. Locally, Hilary has served as chair and now co-chair of East Meets West – Women of Faith Together. Formed in 2006, East meets West aims to bring together women living in the Lancaster area who have different faiths and cultural backgrounds, mostly Christian and Moslem, but welcome participation from all faiths. Their current programme includes Healthy Living Project, swimming sessions and many other activities to enjoy together. 

Q1. How do you pray?
Silently, or out loud, mostly as part of my devotional rhythm which involves liturgy, Bible reading, reading reflections and meditations, and intercessions. If I have a particular person or issue on my mind I will shoot up ‘arrow prayers’ at regular intervals throughout the day. I like both set prayers and to pray spontaneously.

Q2. How do you read the Bible?
It depends on what I have chosen as a structure. For a few years I followed the lectionary which included daily readings from Old and New Testaments and the psalms around a theme. If it was the OT I often carried on reading beyond the prescribed passage because I wanted to follow the story! Also I have often found that the set readings leave out the gory bits or sections that appear to conflict with modern mores and I like to read them too. I don’t want a sanitized version of the Bible. I rarely use a commentary but wish I knew Greek and Hebrew so that I could have a better understanding of the original text. My current structure, a new one that I like very much, only gives one or two verses from OT and NT and psalms which don’t provide the context so I frequently read the verses before and after to get a better idea.

Q3. What’s your favourite Bible verse for this season?
 I don’t have one, and the notion of favourite verses doesn’t mean much to me either. Of course many verses are well known and were learned in my childhood, and I do feel a certain affection for them but I am aware that there is plenty in the Bible I have not yet read. But knowing some verses by heart is useful as they offer inspiration and guidance.

Q4. What songs are you singing at the moment?
The songs I sing with my choir, especially as we have a zoom rehearsal every week. I have also played and sung songs I wrote years ago. Sometimes old choruses from my youth and hymns come to mind and I sing them in my head. We exercise to music and the range is everything from classical to rock, folk, pop and jazz.

Q5. What is bringing you joy in lockdown?
Simple pleasures! Everything from gardening to cooking, cycling, Netflix, Whatsapp calls and texts, Zoom conferences with my family, community group (East Meets West), and choir, and reconnecting with our former church in London online. I am more in touch with old friends from childhood than ever before. In fact thinking about these questions is making me realise how much the past is feeding me during lockdown!

I also enjoy my daily video chats with the asylum seeker I support. The relationships within our community group have further developed through the lockdown and that is a real source of mutual joy and blessing. I would say the same about my weekly calls to my aged aunt, and occasional calls to a cousin who lives alone and whom I rarely had contact with prior to the lockdown. Generally it is the peace and quiet, the regular rhythm of life, the increased contact with nature and the wonderful weather that I am enjoying.

How about you? I love that idea of the past feeding us in the present. I’m not sure I’d been aware of it. Who could you reconnect with at this time? I’m going to make sure I ring my grandma more regularly.

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About Her: Brenda Kanyasi

Today About Her goes overseas to Mombasa, Kenya to hear from Brenda Kanyasi. Brenda is the admin office manager at Tumaini School (set up by Education for Life) , and lives in the community nearby. Brenda is involved in school and her church activities. She loves kids and has tremendous compassion for families in need. Brenda is hugely knowledgeable and wise, she is also very humble and loves to see people succeed.

Q1. How do you pray?
I do find a silent place where I can’t get interrupted, that is either lock myself in the room, sit or sometimes kneel down,sometimes a too lazy and when lying down I do pray too. I always do a thanks giving prayer or  a request prayer. Sometimes, I do it silently in my heart either when at work or just busy with work.

Q2. How do you read the Bible?
Honestly I have someone from church that sends me every days reading on my WhatsApp so that helps me easily each day to get the reading or either like now sometimes I get also from different friends sharing the reading of every Sunday on WhatsApp and this helps me easily to read the Bible.

Sometimes I read books or motivational stories where people share testimonies and bible verses, I use different types of methods to read the Bible.

Q3. What’s your favourite Bible verse for this season?
Psalm 23.

Q4. What songs are you singing at the moment?
Praise and worship songs eg a song called I have no other God than you. You have done what no man has done, you will do what no man can by Nathaniel Bassey.

Q5. What is bringing you joy in lockdown?
I can still get my salary which helps me put food on my table and support the family and I am still safe and believe I will be safe from the virus. 

Being able to support at least one poor family during this season despite the little I provide but seeing the smile on their face makes me feel happy and blessed.

I am trying to keep in touch with friends, trying to spend most of my time with children at the orphanage: working together, chatting, praying together and watching games that they do during free time and join in where I can.

I also do some work (job duties) to help me feel normal.

Massive thanks to Brenda for sharing her everyday faith in this time. A wonderful reminder that the church of God is not bound by country borders. Perhaps today you can spend some time reading Psalm 23 – by yourself, or with a friend – and asking God to remind you of how he shepherds you. Or widen your playlist and listen to more from Nathaniel Bassey here.

About Her: B Dyer

Here we are… our next instalment! I hope you’re all feeling encouraged and inspired by these stories of everyday faith. I’ll let B introduce herself…

Hi! I’m B. My real name is Bethany but I only ever get called that at work, which I still hate. I’m a social worker and mum to two absolute babes Annabelle 5 and Florence 3. Whenever I get asked where I’m from I never know what to say. I moved around roughly every three years of my childhood (vicars daughter problems). When I was 18 I moved out and started a ‘Christian gap year’ which I swiftly gave up on. I then moved to York where I worked as a youth worker and after that ended up going to uni. At some point in the York years, I got married to Ben and we moved to the tiny land of Burscough where we still live 7 years later, the longest I’ve lived anywhere! After 6 years of planting and leading a church called Red Ben started training to be a vicar, so I guess that makes me an almost vicars wife, although I feel like I’ve been one forever. Outside of social work, being a mum and vicar wife-ing you will find me working on some sort of creative project, normally party based (any excuse) taking long lush baths or doing something with people – my extrovertedness just craves the company of others which I’m finding particularly difficult under our current lockdown life. 

I am going to be completely honest with you, I feel a little like I’m the wrong person to be answering these questions Olivia has asked me. Although I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember and to be fair I’m pretty into God, I don’t feel like I’ve got a lot of these things ‘sorted’. But, if I have learnt anything in my almost 32 years of life it is that actually none of us feels like we have things ‘sorted’ and reading other people’s truth is actually really helpful so here we go…

Q1. How do you pray?
Sporadically. There have been different times in my life where I have had routine and rhythm to my prayer life but since having children I have never got back into one. I mostly connect with God through music and being in nature. I can’t help but have an internal, and often external, “WOW isn’t God flipping amazing” moment when surrounded by God’s beautiful creation, which leads to a moment of thanks in his presence. My absolute favourite thing to do, and where I hear God most clearly, is by blaring out a Christian playlist, getting lost in the music and taking time to tune into the lyrics. I also enjoy a guided meditation. I really struggle to be still, make my mind stop and tune in to God. I find that through guided meditation I have something to focus on while stilling my mind. I’m hoping longer term it will help me hear God more clearly.   

Q2. How do you read the Bible?
Again, full disclosure here, I do not do this regularly. This is something I have struggled with forever. I have never found reading the bible easy and will often use my hate of reading (like, I really hate it!) as an excuse. In an attempt to change this, I have recently bought myself a colouring in journaling Bible. I have found that by having space and freedom to draw all over it, write notes, questions and use colour has been really helpful. I also like re-writing bits of the Bible, I find this helps my brain take it in.

Q3. What’s your favourite Bible verse for this season?
I’m not sure what my favourite Bible verse for this season is, but my favourite Bible verse of all time has to be Acts 2:44-47.

This speaks so powerfully to me about the church and how the church should be. I guess in our current situation, living under coronavirus, this still has a lot to teach us. If us doing church is knowing our community, its joys, its pain and its needs then we can be intentionally and actively trying to meet these needs. This could be through prayer, giving to each other financially, through sharing what we have – our lives and our hearts. All those things can still exist even while we can’t be with each other. I think in some ways the world has been doing a good job of being community under lockdown. Thousands of people signing up to volunteer, neighbourhood WhatsApp groups starting, street bingo from your front garden (this genuinely happened on my street today), people delivering food to shielding relatives/friends/neighbours, people being far more intentional in their relationships. This, for me anyway, is what the church should look like all the time!

Q4. What songs are you singing at the moment?
So many! About 3 weeks ago I had a real God moment while driving back from work. I was listening to Lauren Daigle “Love like this” (told you most of my God moments happen via music). The lyrics go “what have I done to deserve love like this.” Now I know that for a lot of us we have heard about God’s love a lot – like a lot a lot. It’s kind of a big deal, the pinnacle of the Christian faith, but I felt it afresh. I really have done nothing to deserve it, yet here it is overwhelmingly outpoured on me. After coming out of that I remembered life right now, lockdown life. But rather than feel sad about it, I almost gained a new perspective. Even with how life is right now, with all it’s restrictions, frustrations, worry and loneliness, that does not change the overwhelming love of God. We can often let our situation or circumstance dictate how we feel or think and that can then affect our relationship with God. But the way God thinks about us does not change. The truth of his sacrifice does not change. His goodness does not change. I honestly felt, there in that moment, that if the worst were to happen and one of my babies were to die, I would still be thankful for God’s love, his sacrifice, that has saved me.

Q5. What is bringing you joy in lockdown?
My girls. However much they drive me bonkers they have equally saved me. As mentioned above I am an extrovert, full-on 100% extrovert who happens to be married to an introvert. The girls have given me company, routine, a mission to make lockdown life fun and of course an excuse for a creative project – school. That alongside working means there is no time to let myself dwell on the parts of life that are  really tough (I desperately want to see my family, squeeze my sisters and go to soft play with my mummy friends). I know I am biased but those little babes are joy bringers and I am blumming thankful for them!

I hope and pray that wherever you are and however you are experiencing lockdown that you wholeheartedly know the love of God. That you can separate your external circumstances from your eternal worth and that you can cling to the truth that God is good! 

Thanks B! Why not follow the above link to listen to Love Like This and let God’s love wash over you? See you all again next week for more encouragement and everyday faith from awesome women.