Dear Friends

The past ten years have been among the happiest of my life, and it will be a great personal wrench for me to leave this lovely area and its people in order to move on to wider duties in the Church of England.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the welcome you have given me here, for the confidence you have placed in me, for the joys and sorrows and all the daily challenges we have shared.

I want especially to thank you for giving such strong support to the successive phases of our ongoing Blueprint Appeal for the development of St Mary's. This aims, among other things, to turn the church building and plant into more of a resource for the wider communities we seek to serve. We still have much to do, so one of my purposes in writing this letter is to urge you to continue your support and goodwill during the vacancy which will inevitably follow my departure, before a new Vicar is appointed. There will be the usual series of Primrose Hill Summer Lectures in June and July, and an exciting concert series is planned for the autumn. These events will be advertised locally, but for those of you who have Internet access up-to-date information will be posted on the church website. Please give these events your strong support.

Fuller details of the next phase of our Blueprint Appeal will be circulated later. We have set ourselves ambitious targets, and have already begun to apply for major grants. But all experience shows that external funding is easier to attract where there is proven support from the community. The money will be spent on

• establishing our youth work on a permanent footing;
• improving our ministry to the elderly;
• guaranteeing our musical and choral tradition, and the role of St Mary's as a valued local concert and practice venue, by undertaking a major overhaul of our organ and maintaining our organ scholarship to encourage young musicians;
• further developments to the building, to ensure that it remains fit for the many purposes it now serves and will serve in the future.

If you would like to support these objectives now by making a donation, please send your contribution to:

St Mary's Blueprint Appeal, Church of St Mary the Virgin Primrose Hill, Elsworthy Road, London NW3 3DJ.

Our appeal team would also welcome help in kind, including any ideas and contacts you may have for fundraising and your views on areas of outreach where you think the Church might be able to play a stronger role.

I wish you all the Peace and Joy of Christ, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all your endeavours in Primrose Hill.

Robert Atwell