ONE meets in leafy villages in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The other operates in the most dangerous city in the world. But the Portsmouth branch of the Mothers’ Union has created a new link with the Mothers’ Union in Baghdad to offer them prayer, support and practical help.

Members have to run the gauntlet of sniper fire to attend meetings in St George’s Church, which is surrounded by bomb barricades and razor wire and protected 24 hours a day by armed guards. The church’s entire lay leadership is presumed dead after the five Iraqi-born Christians went missing on the way to a conference in Jordan.

Yet the Mothers’ Union group in the Baghdad church has grown from 100 members when it started, at Easter 2006, to more than 400 now. They meet every week, and hope to run parenting courses, visit orphanages and make cots for disabled children.

Although the setting is very different, their projects are similar to those run by the Portsmouth Mothers’ Union, which organises holidays for deprived families, works with a women’s refuge and makes ‘wraps’ for stillborn babies at St Mary’s Hospital. The link confirms both the international perspective and the family emphasis of the modern Mothers’ Union.

It was Canon Andrew White, the rector of St George’s, Baghdad, who made the link possible. He spoke about the situation in Iraq at a Mothers’ Union event in Denmead last summer. Having just launched the Mothers’ Union branch in Baghdad, he suggested a link with the Portsmouth diocese – which stretches from Botley in the west to Emsworth in the east and includes the whole of the Isle of Wight.

That link has now been confirmed, and Andrew White travelled to St George’s Church again at Christmas. His New Year update for the Portsmouth Mothers’ Union included details of a service, play, bazaar and feast in the church, all organised by the Baghdad Mothers’ Union to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

St George’s Church itself – the only Anglican church in Iraq – has more than 800 members, making it one of the largest and most active churches in the country. Its members come from a variety of Christian backgrounds, including Chaldean, Assyrian, Catholic, Evangelical and Syrian Orthodox.

The church was founded in 1936, forcibly closed by Saddam Hussein, then looted and badly damaged by rocket fire in 2003. It lacks plumbing, pews and many other basic necessities, but worshippers still meet for Sunday services and midweek Alpha courses. But there is no starting time for church services because security checks for the congregation can take three hours.

Pauline Wale, the former president of the Portsmouth Mothers’ Union, said: “Andrew White now lives and worships in Liphook, so when he was looking for a diocese to create a link with the Baghdad branch, we were the obvious people to ask.

“We’ve let them know that we are praying for them, and sent them some information about us. We’re also hoping to send them Mothers’ Union lapel badges, each of which will have a member’s prayer attached to it. Ultimately, when the situation is better, it would be great to organise an exchange with the Baghdad branch.”

Our diocese’s branch of the Mothers’ Union already has seven other global links – five with branches in Nigeria, as well as one in Australia, one in the Sudan and St Albans in the UK.