There's an awful lot going on in our world right now, including in our own country. We don't preach on a particular political line or view but we do pray for a nation that cares for everyone, a lot in fact. We are particularly lucky that Hitchin is so caring, from its High Street right down to individual efforts.
Our recent shoebox project saw us take over 1300 Christmas shoeboxes down to Link to Hope HQ, including some soggy ones from a van that broke down in the rain! Over 50 people were involved with sorting, packaging and delivering (not to mention the behind the scenes jobs that keep everything flowing!) - 1 in 3 came from outside our church. This next week, two of our members are joining Link to Hope to deliver the Shoeboxes out in Eastern Europe and we will be praying for them and their safe travels whilst they are out there.
This week we also head into December and the run up to Christmas, its the First Sunday of Advent after all ! POSADA has launched and so if you live locally and are not involved, we'd love you to be part - click here for more details - or come along to a Christmas service.
We are collect for the Foodbank all-year round and would invite you to support Hitchin Food Rescue Hub, another great effort trying to make reductions to the amount of food waste. Similarly, our ecobricks project targeting non-recyclable plastic waste is continuing strong and so far, we've collected about 100 since we took the last lot to the farm. Also this Christmas, we're combining Somewhere To Go with Feed Up Warm Up down at the Our Lady's Church Hall opposite Helping Herts Homeless.
As we make these small physical differences to ours and others lives, we continue to pray for these efforts but also for the wider change that means foodbanks would no longer be required to provide for so many, that ecobricks would be redundant as together we reset our lifestyles of consumption and waste, that the poorest of our land and other lands would be provided with so much more than simply Christmas drop-ins or Christmas shoeboxes..
We are also on the run up to a General Election and have heard from our local candidates at the CTiH-organised Hustings event. If you couldn't attend, click here to watch the video of the evening (filmed by HitchinTV). This December, we'd like to invite you to join us as we pray for our nation. We'll be in the prayer room so inside the link building and head right up the ramp, left into the church and through the door ahead of you.
We are meeting at 8pm (no longer than 1 hour) on Mondays 2nd, 9th and 16th in December so whether into faith or not, you are welcome to join as we pray for our nation
