The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Deuteronomy 31:8
Dear All
Hope you have had a good week.
This Sunday morning, Rev David Sebley will be leading our service and sharing the final talk on the Paraclesis series. We will also share in Communion together.
In the afternoon we have our Service of Remembrance and we invite everyone who might want to come and spend time remembering a loved one who is no longer with us to the service at 3pm. This will be a short, quiet and reflective service where we will have the opportunity to light a candle in memory of our loved ones. Following the service we will have tea and cake and share a short time of fellowship together before returning home.
Brenda Gaisford and Jean Moat
Please do continue to remember Brenda and Jean’s families in your prayers as they mourn the loss of these two special ladies and prepare for their funerals.
The service of thanksgiving for Brenda will take place on Monday 14th November at 10 am at church. There will be a family committal afterwards at the Crematorium. Please continue to pray for Brenda’s family at this time.
Jean and Brenda were faithful Christian ladies and amongst the sadness we give thanks for the knowledge that they are now with their Lord, suffering and struggling no more.
Warm welcome hub
Thank you to all those who have expressed an interest in being involved with this project. We would like to invite everyone who is interested in helping with this to a meeting on Monday 7th November at 2pm to explore this together further.
Call to Prayer
The Elders are meeting to pray on Monday 7th November, 8-9pm. We would like to invite everyone to join us at church to pray for the church and church family, the Advent and Christmas preparations, the finances and the processes of exploring a joint pastorate with Tiptree.
Ladies Retreat Day
Jill Ball has kindly offered to sort out our transport arrangements for the retreat day to Assington on 10th December. She writes: “The retreat day at Assington will soon be here. It would be great if we could all travel together, where possible. If you are able to offer a lift, please fill in the sheet with your name, how many you can take and where you live (Prettygate, Stanway, Town etc) so we can try and match people who live near each other. If you’d like a lift, please write your name and where you live (Prettygate, Stanway, Town etc) so we can find you someone close by to take you.
If you’ve already made arrangements with someone, check with them first before putting your name here so we don’t double book anyone!”
Remembrance Sunday
Our service next Sunday (13th November) will focus on Remembrance and will include the two minutes’ silence at 11am. We will also be dedicating the shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. Please do bring yours to church with you before or on that day.
CAP Christmas Hampers
We have had an e-mail from Paula Goddard from CAP who writes “I would firstly like to start by thanking you for your heart to serve those struggling with poverty in what many have described as the most difficult time of our generation. The cost of living crisis is seeing individuals and families face not just financial hardship but also poverty in education, employment, health, relationships as well as spiritual poverty. We know that it is only by you standing with us in faith that we are able to bring hope into these situations. We have seen churches in Colchester coming together and truly demonstrating how the body of Christ works to reach every corner of our town. Through your support we have seen God truly at work, with 181 people becoming debt free and 54 people coming into relationship with Jesus since 2013.
Isaiah 64:8 says ‘Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; We are all the work of your hand.’
As we continue this work we ask for you to prayerfully consider the coming season of Christmas as well as the coming year and how we can seek to bless these families we currently work with. We would love to bless each of our client families with a Christmas Lunch and a hamper for Christmas – that’s 77 hampers!! But with the considerations of Covid still being around and minimising how many people handle the items going into each hamper as we have done for the last 2 years, we would like to ask for financial donations from churches through our Christmas giving page
www.stewardship.org.uk/pages/colchestercapdebtcentre
£10 would help us buy a gift for a child
£35 would buy a hamper for an individual
£60 would buy a hamper for a large family.
A hamper at Christmas is an opportunity to let our clients know how much they are valued. Once again thank you. God Bless Paula Goddard”.
This week
There will be the normal Zoom prayer meetings on Wednesday and Saturday this week, both at 9.30am and the Zoom details for these will also be sent out early in the week.
With love and blessings.