Liz’s Letter 20/11/2022

Dear All
Hope you have had a good week.
This Sunday morning we have the great joy of welcoming six people into church membership. Please pray for Gemma and Daniel Fiddaman, Sam Rodwell, Val Partner, Pam Smith and Robin Wroe-Brown as they come into membership. George and Hope will be coming into membership in a couple of weeks time.

Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes
Thank you to everyone who lovingly packed shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child and also thanks to Pam Soames for organising the appeal again this year. 70 boxes left the church on Monday!

Warm Welcome Hub
The Warm Welcome Hub starts on 5th December and has been advertised around the community. The plans are:

• We open up the Warm Welcome Hub on Mondays from 9am to 3pm
• Teas and coffees and cup a soup will be offered along with cake
• A board games table, jigsaw puzzle, toddler area etc to be set up and folk encouraged to bring any books or crafts they might like to do
• We envisage needing a minimum of 3 people per session (9-12 and then 12-3pm) each day, one to oversee the galley and others to oversee the main church area and be on hand to talk
• We have set up an e-mail address warmhub@plumeavenuechurch.org.uk for the administration of the warm hub rotas etc.
• We will start on 5th December and meet on 12th and 19th. We will then have a 2 week break for Christmas and the New Year and restart on 9th January.

We would therefore like to encourage anyone who is available to sign up to help. We also need cake makers. If you are able to help please e-mail warmhub@plumeavenuechurch.org.uk with your available dates as soon as possible.
Sue Watt will be drawing this rota together for which we are very grateful.
If you have any questions or suggestions please do let us know.
This is a really exciting opportunity to come alongside the residents of the Prettygate Community and has wonderful mission opportunities. Please do prayerfully consider giving some time to this if you can. The more volunteers we get the less pressure there will be on a small group of people.

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!”

CAP Christmas Hampers
CAP are collecting Financial gifts to be able to provide Christmas Hampers for all of their 77 clients. If you are able to donate to these, please use their 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.

Men’s Chat and Chill
Our next meet will be our last of the year and so we thought we would have a Christmas breakfast!
It will be on Monday, November 28th, 9.00ish at the Harvester in Stanway. We will need to have numbers so that we can book tables and so please let Adrian know. I, unfortunately, will be away.
Have a great time and see you back in the New Year. Peter

Advent and Christmas.
Below are the dates of the Advent and Christmas services and events. We need people to help with the refreshments for the Nativity trail on 11th December. We will also need some help with packing goodie bags for this. Please let me know if you are able to help with either or both of these.
Next Saturday, 26th November we will start to get the church ready for Christmas. We could do with a couple of volunteers to carry the manger in and help fill it with straw! If you can help please do speak to me.
Next Sunday we will be giving everyone an Advent Prayer Guide to use through the season.

This week
We will have the usual prayer meetings on Wednesday and Saturday, both at 9.30am. The Zoom details for these will be sent out early in the week.

With love and blessings.