Every year Lidgett Park Methodist church chooses a project to focus our charitable effort. Sometimes it focuses on one charity, sometimes on two or three. Money raising events during the year raise more than £10000 for the project and contribute considerably to the social life of our church community.
More than £17000 was raised for Zarach, a charity that provides beds and bedding for children who are without.
The money this year is being used to support a range of charities that the church usually supports out of normal expenditure but cannot because of a budget deficit resulting from the pandemic. The charities supported are:
As many of you will know by now, our October baking raised £420 for the Project. Our thanks, as always, to you all.
We are also delighted that our two charities – Oasis Zambia and the Sreepur Village in Bangladesh - have each received £7,000 from Lidgett, which will be especially welcome to them in this extremely difficult year for all charities.
Given the news on Covid, and the latest restrictions, it seems as if Christmas this year will be very different and far less social than normal. So we are offering you a selection of Christmas goodies that we hope will bring you some much needed cheer. By the time you read this, I hope you have all seen that the bakers in the Project Group are all offering delicious Christmas cakes, made to order, and that the usual “Coffee Morning” list also contains a variety of Christmas delights. (If there is anyone who hasn’t seen these lists, please get in touch with me and I will send them to you.)
Please also remember to order David Wilks’s cd of organ music “In A Lighter Vein” available at £10 each from Kathy Benson. ALL proceeds from the sale will go to the Project.
As the nights get longer and the weather more gloomy, as we are unable to chat with each other in person and as infection rates rise, I would like to thank you yet again for your continued support, which has enabled a small part of our “normal” church life to continue and support others.
Margaret Farrar on behalf of the Project Group.
Firstly, may I open with my hope that you are all keeping safe and well in this very disturbing and strange time in our lives. As a church family, we are all so grateful to Tanya for her daily messages of love, hope and prayer and for each other, as we keep in touch in all the different ways that are open to us. Our physical church life is beyond us at the moment and thus we were not able to hold the Annual Church Meeting in April, when, amongst other items, we vote for the charity that the church wants to support over the next year. As yet, we do not know when we will be able to hold this meeting. Our two current charities, Oasis Relief Zambia and the Sreepur Village may well be suffering the loss of giving that all charities are experiencing currently. Obviously, we are going to lose at least six months of fund-raising events during the current crisis. The Project Group would like to suggest that we carry on fund-raising for these same two charities for the next year, alongside the two proposals in last month’s Link: to purchase a new dishwasher and to start to raise money for replacing the windows in the Youth Hall. This would mean that when the GCM of 2021 is held, we will be in a position to vote for a new charity following any proposals that are made and including Homeless Street Angels which would have been voted on at April’s meeting. This is a suggestion and not a forgone conclusion. I have contacted Tanya, Howard and Stan and they are all in agreement with this. The current Project Group are all happy to continue on the committee and are already trying to arrange events, hopefully starting with the Harvest Lunch. This could also, perhaps, be seen as a thanksgiving meal for God’s help in guiding us through all this. I am happy to receive your thoughts and comments on this, be they positive or not! Thank you.
Margaret Farrar, on behalf of the Project Group.
In this strange and often distressing year, the Project Group like to think that they have brought a little cheer into lives by their monthly baking. Many of you have been kind enough to send thanks and messages of appreciation which we have been delighted to receive. In keeping with this, then, we are having our next baking day on Saturday November 21st and we hope to bring a little Festive Cheer into the offer. As well as some of our staple bakes – scones, pasties etc. – we will be offering stollen, large mince pies, a limited amount of home-made mincemeat and Mary will again be baking her small Christmas cakes to order. The bakers will each also be baking a larger Christmas cake. The recipe will be the favourite of each of the individual bakers and so they will all be slightly different. What we can promise, is that they will all 14 be delicious! More about this in our baking list which will be sent out mid-October.
Are you already thinking about how you are going to manage to go Christmas shopping, what presents you can buy, how you can post presents to folk you may not be able to meet up with this year or do you just generally need a little bit of cheering up yourself? Then here is a solution! Many of you will remember that several years ago, David Wilks produced a CD of music played on the organ at Lidgett. We are thrilled and extremely grateful to David for agreeing to play another selection of tunes, this time with a slightly different focus. The CD, entitled “ In a Lighter Vein” includes such favourites as The Dam Busters March, The Flower Song from Carmen, The prelude Londonderry Air, Elgar’s Chanson de Matin and Juliet’s Waltz Song from Gounod’s Romeo & Juliet, just to mention a few. Importantly, the CD has been professionally produced and the result is a beautiful reflection of David’s musical skill and the magnificence of our organ. The CD’s are available in November but can be pre-ordered from Kathy Benson at any time now. The cost is £10 per cd and ALL the proceeds will go to the Project funds.
To everyone who has supported the Project fund-raising during these past six months, the group would like to say an enormous “thank you”. Despite the problems we have all faced – and continue to face – your generous donations have ensured that at least a small part of our “normal” life has continued, and our charities have been the grateful recipients of your generosity. The Project Group will continue to think of different ways to carry on this fund-raising until we can all meet up once more and enjoy each others company again.