The Compassion Team work all year round to support families in need, and December was a particularly busy time for them. They are a brilliant example of serving our community, and leader of the team, Rachel Lowe, has given us a round up of all they did during the festive season...
Tara and Shirley were hard at work in the food collection team with all the surplus food coming in from supermarkets over Christmas. Thanks to them we were able to run a Foodbank on Christmas Eve which was a real blessing to 15 clients and their families.
Families who were not planning a Christmas dinner were supplied with turkeys, vegetables, Christmas puddings, and chocolates, as well as lots of other goodies to keep them well fed. Thanks also to Rohita, Ben, and Neil for giving up their Christmas eve night and helping. The food collections kept coming and we had a fully stocked freezer for the new year.
Just before Christmas, the compassion gift team - led by Charlie and Jill Carr - organised Christmas gifts for the City of Sanctuary, and 100 bags of kindness for families at St John's school in need of a blessing. The bags each contained a board game or toy and fluffy socks, as well as lots of Christmas food. We also gave the local teenage hostel 12 bags containing some gift items as well as more practical items like toiletries. Many thanks to Simon, Cath, Martha and Dexter Brown, as well as Rohita and Jim for helping us pack the bags.
There was also amazing work from Charlie doing all the shopping and from Jill keeping everyone organised with age range gift tags to make the task easy. Many thanks also go to the Beloved team and Millgate school children who made the Christmas cards for the bags.
Finally, I also managed to provide at least one Christmas present to all our foodbank clients over the Christmas period. A few of our regular clients got a personalised present just for them.
Many thanks to all who donated to the compassion fund. We don't just use funds at Christmas and Easter, we use them year round to support families in need. We buy toiletries as well as fresh fruit and vegetables.
I personally would also like to thank the prayer team who support me behind the scenes, because the compassion work has been growing year on year. I know I need God's grace to deal week on week with clients in crisis as well as sometimes utter reliance on God that it will all come together (as it did on Christmas eve) so their prayers are so valuable.
As for the coming year, we would like more support on the food collection team, so if anyone is interested in completing food hygiene training, has a car, and does not mind late night visits to supermarket car parks please let me know: rlowe@sjbchurch.uk
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