The pace continues. This week we saw the end of our part of the Rank building: you can now see through the gap into the court beyond.  Work now transfers to the more difficult task of getting up the foundations without affecting either the rest of the Rank building or the Chapel.  C staircase has also been cleared and the cycle shed and Jane’s garden are no more

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Jonathan Hurst, our conservation officer visited on Wednesday and viewed the exposed wall at the rear of No 31 Jesus Lane. Inside, on the first floor we have removed the bookshelves from what was Cindy’s study. This has exposed a set of cracks in the western wall which suggests that at some time in the past, there was a pitched roof extension over the area now taken up by the college entrance. Intriguing indeed! Jonathan has asked us to produce a report on previous buildings on the site so we are on the hunt for any early photos from the late 19^th century before Wesley House was built.

This week also saw the organ back in action.  Johnsons the organ engineers, came out to carry out an overhaul and gave it a clean bill of health. We have installed a generator to provide the power to run it for services. The organ performed well in testing and should be ready for founders and benefactors on 12^th November. We are also installing space heaters in the Chapel to keep it dry as the weather begins to cool.

It is a wonderful thing to travel half the way across the world and find colleagues and friends. Jane spent this evening at the home of Mvume and Phumzile Dandala and was treated not only to good food and a kind welcome but also a collegial conversation about some of the challenges in higher education and the purposes of theological formation.

Mvume and Phumzile recall their time in Cambridge with great affection and wish to be remembered to many friends, amongst them, Brian Beck, John Barrett, Christina leMoignan, Keith Davies and Peter Ensor (now in Kenya). They were saddened to learn of the recent death of Geoff Cornell.

Since leaving Wesley House Mvume has worked pioneering mixed race circuits in Southern Africa and superintending the Methodist work in Port Elizabeth at the height of the struggles against apartheid, himself being detained. Subsequently he led the missions unit of the MCSA before becoming its presiding bishop and is now leading the MSCA’s new seminary into its second five years.

Reflecting on what the Wesley House experience offered to Mvume, he said:

‘Wesley House offered me a community of prayer; the intellectual rigour of the tutorial system; and the opportunity to be a black student in a mixed student body together with men and women from different parts of the world.’ Now, he seeks to model and teach a theologically informed leadership that is based on gender, racial and ethnic equality and justice; and to ensure that the new seminary produces church leaders and theologians who are able to contribute intellectually as well as practically to the huge task of nation-building in South Africa and to take their place on the world Methodist stage.

There are striking resonances between Mvume’s experience of Wesley house, his vision for SMMS, and the Wesley House Trustees’ vision for the future on which we hope to build a lasting future partnership.