How I became a hymn book smuggler into the EU

Smuggled hymn books in the boot of my car © Ricky Yates

As I posted here a year ago, since May 2023, I have been officiating at a monthly English-language Anglican service of Evening Prayer held on a Thursday evening in the Unterkirche of the Dresden Frauenkirche. This is in addition to the monthly Sunday evening service in the Hauptraum for which I’ve had responsibility since January 2015.

For my monthly Sunday evening service, the Pfarrbüro produce a twelve-page complete Order of Service based on the text I send them at least a week earlier. Hymns are taken from ‘Hymns Ancient & Modern New Standard’, published in 1983, with the melody line of the tune, as well as all the words, reproduced. As I understand it, the Pfarrbüro was given a copy . . . → Read More: How I became a hymn book smuggler into the EU

A Blogpost about my Blog

Sunflower & a bee © Ricky Yates

Despite promising to be more regular in writing and posting here on my blog, I must yet again apologise that over four and a half months have past since my last post. However, in the last couple of days, I have discovered that, even if I had written and posted a blog post, almost nobody would have read it. Because if you had put my URL into your browser, you would have received a message saying that it was unsafe to proceed because my website had security issues.

Back in February 2024, I renewed the hosting of rickyyates.com with Namecheap.com. Part of that deal was the provision of an SSL certificate showing that my website was secure. This should have downloaded automatically, but it didn’t 🙁 There was . . . → Read More: A Blogpost about my Blog

House renovation – the next stage

The little un-renovated ground floor room © Ricky Yates

As I entitled my previous post, ‘The renovation of the ground floor of my house is just about complete‘. But there are two important little phrases in that title – ‘just about’ and ‘ground floor’. And those two phrases are connected.

The photograph on the left shows the one little ground floor room to which nothing has been done, (other than me vacuuming up all the cobwebs before taking the photo 😉 ), hence ‘just about’. And there remain two rooms in the roof space to which also nothing has been done, hence I wrote ‘ground floor’.

Please note, I didn’t say ‘upstairs’, in describing the two rooms in the roof space. Because that is the problem, . . . → Read More: House renovation – the next stage

The renovation of the ground floor of my house is just about complete

Stará Oleška 44 with the first snowfall of the 2023/24 winter, 24th November 2023 © Ricky Yates

Once again, I have to start a blog post with a sincere apology for the absence of any posts for a whole six months – the longest hiatus in the fourteen-year history of this blog. In recent months I have said to myself several times that I must start writing again. But then, there are always other things to do. But enough of my excuses, here is the latest instalment of the renovation of Stará Oleška 44.

Before the extension on the west side of my house was built, (on the left in the photograph), with a new front door into an entrance lobby and what is now my sitting-dining room, the way into the house was up . . . → Read More: The renovation of the ground floor of my house is just about complete

My ongoing ministry at the Frauenkirche, Dresden

Walking towards the Frauenkirche © Ricky Yates

I’m very conscious of two things. That I haven’t posted here for two months and that most of my more recent posts have either been about my disputes with UK banks or about the renovation of my house. So here is a new post about my ongoing ministry at the Frauenkirche in Dresden, a topic I haven’t written about since February 2020, except for briefly mentioning it in my post about last winter.

The day after our December 2022 service of ‘Nine Lessons & Carols for Christmas’, my Archdeacon Leslie Nathaniel and I had a most useful meeting with the two Frauenkirche clergy – Pfarrer Markus Engelhardt and Pfarrerin Angelika Behnke. Archdeacon Leslie asked about the possibility of having a second English-language . . . → Read More: My ongoing ministry at the Frauenkirche, Dresden