Article from the 'Pompey Chimes' the official newspaper of the Anglican Diocese of Portsmouth.
For people in Iraq, the link with our dicese can mean the difference between life and death.
That's what the Vicar of Baghdad told a rapt congregation of 200 people as he praised the unique link between our diocese's Mothers' Union and the one at his church.
Canon Andrew White spoke at a special service of celebration at St Nicholas' Church Centre, Bedhampton.
The 3,000-strong Mothers' Union (MU) at St George's Church, Baghdad, organises food for 4,000 people each week, helps children who have lost limbs in the war and runs a clinic with doctors, dentists and a pharmacy. The MU also heads up the prayer ministry there, and their healing prayer provides cures for those the doctors can't help.
And MU members in our diocese help to support that work by raising money, praying for the work and sending MU badges for members in Baghdad.
More than £2,000 had already been raised and the Bedhampton meeting raised another £682. That will help to rebuild the MU sewing room, which was destroyed by a bomb.
Canon Andrew brought some young people from the congregation at St George's to the Bedhampton event, and two girls who are the choir there sang a hymn in Arabic.
The girls presented our MU president, Sheila King, with a banner made by the ladies in Baghdad, which depicts Baghdad and Portsmouth joined together with a dove for peace. Sheila gave the girls gifts from Portsmouth.
The meeting was interrupted by a phone call from Nawal, the MU leader in Baghdad. She asked for prayers and thanked our diocese for the banner that is now hanging permanently in St George's.
Canon Andrew spoke of his 20-year membership of the MU, and how his church's branch had grown since St George's reopened in 2003. He used a leather map to illustrate Biblical places that are part of modernday Iraq, and he spoke of the stem cell treatment centre in the north of Iraq where many, including him, are treated for multiple sclerosis.
He revealed he has 35 soldiers to protect him when he goes about his work. And he gave one sad statistic that illustrates the continuing difficulties in Iraq - of 13 adults he baptised in one week, 11 had been killed by the following week.
MU president Sheila King said: "Last time we heard Andrew speak, he had been very upbeat about the situation in Iraq following the arrival of British and US troops. But, asked if things continue to improve, the answer was a firm no.
"It is still good that Saddam Hussein was defeated, but recently things have got a lot worse. Since Barack Obama came to power, all funding from the US has stopped, and the troops are being withdrawn. Without the US troops, he said they would be left unprotected.
"Canon Andrew White radiates happiness and goodwill and strength. He obviously loves the people with whom he works in Baghdad, particularly the children, but what a world he lives in. "He asks for, and needs, all our prayers for his work and for the work of the members of his congregation. It is humbling to listen to him."