The shoe boxes full of wonderful gifts for children were all packed and by the time you read this will have been dispatched by an army of volunteers working for Operation Christmas Child.
Thank you to everyone for contributing and to Lorna and Ian White and Olga Slack for organising our collection.
Now we can look forward to opening our own Christmas boxes!!
But we don’t need to wait until Christmas Day, much less Boxing Day!
Our build up to Christmas begins over the first weekend in December.
On Saturday 1st December from 10-00 until 2-00 we shall be joining with friends from St Luke’s and St Michael’s for a Christmas follow-up to the Holiday Club. We very much hope that youngsters at Primary School and helpers from the Holiday Club (and any new volunteers too!) will be able to join in a very special start to Christmas.
Then on Sunday 2nd December we’ll be thinking of a Christmas Box to share when the team who have planned our morning services will be leading our worship. Who knows there may be the first of the Christmas boxes to open!
It’s more fun to give a Christmas box! On the first Sunday of Advent we will invite people to give a special ‘Christmas Box’ this Christmas. We are going to do two things with the monetary gifts that are given that day. We are going to buy Christmas presents to give to each of the people
who come to Highbury Day Centre. And through Christian Aid our aim is to raise enough money to provide Solar Panels for a community health centre in Malawi.
After the first of the boxes then comes the Christmas Tree.
All being well it will have arrived by Sunday 9th December. It won’t look much during our morning service ... But we hope that the children and any other helpers who want to join in will decorate the tree after the morning service. Come, ready for some fun!
The tree will then be the focal point for the first of our carol services on Tuesday 11th December at 1-30pm when Belmont School join us for their carol service.
Saturday 15th December sees us meeting together at the Oakley Sainsbury’s to sing Carols for Christian Aid. Look out in church for more details about the time.
By Sunday 16th December the excitement of Christmas will be growing, but at the start of our morning service all we shall have by way of decoration will be a Christmas Tree.
We would like everyone who comes to church that morning to bring along a Christmas decoration that we can put up in church, maybe on the window sills or on the platform or to hang on the walls. Who knows we may have enough to decorate the hall as well!
But it will be up to you!