NEWS FROM ST MARY'S CHURCH

CREATING SPACE

“The people that walk in darkness will see a great light. For those that live in a land of deep darkness a light will shine.” Isaiah 9:2

When the Nurture Room closed down last week I felt very concerned about not being in touch with the children I see on a daily basis. The reality of this situation is tough for us all, but for children it is even harder to understand. For parents the anxiety is about keeping young ones occupied, calm and happy.

We wanted to make sure we kept connected to the children in our community and so the Nurture Room has gone online and Creating Space Chippy is born! If you are on Instagram you can follow @creatingspace.chippy for daily posts with craft ideas, wellbeing messages, storytelling plus art sent in from #CreativeKidsOfChippy! It is proving popular and has been a really positive way of staying in touch with the Nurture Room and Remix young people plus others in the local area.

We are also attracting attention from as far away as Malta and Guam, Micronesia! Please follow along – it will be great to have you along on the ride!

Each week we are also handing out 100+ Family Activity bags based around a theme. A family focused craft, colouring sheets, suggestions of music and movement, outside activities, ideas to spark writing and general encouragement. Since the bags were released on Wednesday there has been a great response! We will also be posting the activity sheets on the website so do check in and share with family and friends.

One of the most amazing things about this situation has been drawing together and working with others in the local area and seeing the generosity of people from all around. We have been totally blessed with some wonderful gestures of kindness. 250 Easter eggs donated by Chastleton House @ntchastleton and craft materials donated by Thrive https://www.thrive-northox.co.uk/ are just a couple.

We love this community and all the families in it. Please pray that despite the most extraordinary of circumstances and the hardship and anxiety that is to come, God will show himself through the love and compassion that we show for each other and the creative way that we can find to shift our lives.

Sending love & light to you all,

-Catherine

VIRTUAL ABLAZE

This season of isolation has given us millennials and Gen Z’s an opportunity to connect in different ways, which has been super exciting, despite all the fear and uncertainty in our world at present. We have been able to launch our ‘making disciples’ theme this week using Google Hangouts. Such is the amount of young people wanting to meet we are having to move platform this Sunday.

We also have enjoyed a virtual prayer meeting together, lifting up the needs of our world and each other to the Lord. We have been enjoying catching up together and despite being in isolation, we are well connected! God has opened up new windows for us to engage with each other, encouraging each other to shine brightly in our current digital worlds and homes.

Check it out above: Yes, you are right, we did have a monkey in our virtual youth group!

-Jonny

MARY'S MEALS/CHIPPY LARDER UPDATE

• a large donation meant that we could buy an industrial fridge to take dairy & chilled projects for Chippy Larder
• Aldi have been amazing and let us in at 7.45am each morning to shop in an empty store - which allows us to whizz round & add stock the freezers each day
• people have lent freezers - if you have a CHEST FREEZER that you could empty & loan that would be incredible (we will collect)
• volunteers have been fantastic, and we’re so grateful to Philip Sharman for stepping up to coordinate them all
• we’ve partnered with The Chippy Larder for all our distribution & delivery
• local people have been so generous - a man kindly tested all the refrigeration to check it was up to standard out of hours and for free
• we cleared Costa as it closed and Isobel & I had a hilarious evening driving around Chippy dropping off paninis & cake to lots of the families we work with, as well as the  health centre & schools!

URGENT REQUEST

AND FINALLY...