For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
Dear All,
What a joy it was to see the church so full last Sunday morning as we celebrated the Risen Lord and Hannah and Immy’s baptisms. Please do continue to pray for Hannah and Immy following their public declarations of their faith through their amazing testimonies and baptisms.
In the afternoon of Easter Sunday, a good number of folk joined the Easter Egg Hunt around the neighbourhood and there was a real buzz at Prettygate Baptist Church where the trail finished with crafts and cake!
Thank you to everyone who helped to make Holy Week and Easter so special this year.
Some folk have shared how they have encountered God in new ways and how different aspects of our journey through Holy Week have really spoken to them. I’d like to invite anyone who has a testimony or story to share to do so – please do let me know if you are able to do this so that we can include a time during the services over the next couple of weeks.
Colchester Foodbank
Thank you to everyone who gave so generously again to the Foodbank collections. When we took the donations to the Foodbank centre it was clear that many of their shelves are very empty.
We will continue to take church donations each week and be open for collections between 10-11 am each Saturday.
The items they particularly need are : Long life fruit juice, long life milk, fruit squash, tins of custard, rice pudding, veg, meat, fish, pasta sauce, tea bags (80 bags), jam/peanut butter, multipack snacks, small jars of coffee, nappies size 5 ,6,7 & 8, deodorant, shampoo, shaving gel, small washing powder/liquid and washing up liquid.
Tuesday evening bible study
We start a new series this Tuesday based on 1 Peter. If you would like to join us please do so – the Zoom details will be sent out early in the week. There is a booklet to accompany the series – please do let me know if you would like one.
Holiday Club Planning
We have agreed to run a Summer Holiday Club on Mondays 29th July, 5th, 12th and 19th August from 9.45am to 12 noon. The holiday club will be open to all children who have attended school in the 2023/24 school year from reception to year 5. We especially need people to help with the children’s groups, run the sound desk, lead games, provide refreshments, make cakes and help in the café area. If you are able to help with this please do speak to Rachael. You don’t need to be available for all four dates. If you are volunteering to help with the children you will need a DBS check through the church which we can arrange if you don’t currently hold one. This is an exciting opportunity to share the good news about the Christian faith with these children so do give it prayerful consideration.
Eco Church
Eco Church is described as: “Eco Church is a learning community of churches of all shapes and sizes open to all denominations. It provides a framework to support your church and its leadership to take practical action on caring for God’s earth. It includes a toolkit of resources, an online award survey, quarterly email update, online events, and conferences. The Eco Church survey will help you ‘go green’ in all areas of your church life. The work you do will all count towards a Bronze, Silver or Gold Eco Church award hopefully, all three”.
We would like to register as a church and start work on the Bronze award. We need a group of people who will work together to do this for you. We have had a couple of names who would potentially like to be a part of team for this but would ideally like to have a few more. If you have a passion for how we need to protect and look after God’s earth, this will no doubt be something you would bring a lot to. Please do speak to Dave, Marie or myself so that we can put everyone in touch with each other to begin this piece of work.
This week
This week, there will be prayer meetings on Wednesday and Saturday mornings at 9.30 am and the Tuesday evening homegroup. Zoom details will be e-mailed early in the week.
Our other normal weekly activities continue to take a break this week as it is still school holidays.
With love and blessings.
