The flowers have arrived!

They were a little later getting to church than we'd hoped, and there are still a few more to come, but THE FLOWERS HAVE ARRIVED!

All the preparations, all the designs, all the mechanics-making...all of it will come together over the next two days with the most beautiful of blooms and some talented arrangers to create 'Sing for Joy!'

Here are a few pictures from today;

In the back window, there were some marvellous mechanics appearing. 

Can you guess what this will be?

A small team armed with secateurs conditioned all the flowers after checking them off against Rita's master list. There are a few still to do - it seemed to be most of the blue flowers that were missing, oddly enough. Then we sorted the flowers into buckets for each arrangement and moved them into church. It's hard to believe that these fairly unimpressive tubs are going to be turned into fabulous displays over the next two days.

These will become a Bible, an Indian garland and the resurrection...

Sometimes there are props to help create the display - this is a hand painted backboard to make our altar look like the one in CSI St. Mary's, Pudukkottai.

While we'd waited for the flowers to arrive, some windows were dressed completely.

All they needed was their flowers;

There were some fabulous colours appearing in the windows...

...while some were more muted yet full of potential.

And today, the altar cloth arrived for the quiet room too. Laura had taken my idea and created something way, way better than I could have made. I was moved to tears. 

'Father, I place into your hands...'

Oh - and those marvellous mechanics I showed you earlier? Here's what they looked like by the time we left for home...