January Update from Gordon

Well, what can I say, an amazing, amazing December. Without your help, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, we could not do it. We could never manage at all, but with your help we can do amazing things for our neighbours, who are struggling in these difficult times. Our website has all the details, which really are incredible, but also shocking, as our workload continues to grow month on month.

We tried to put a value on what we do, but it’s very difficult, as we don’t have to pay for all the food or all the presents, we delivered over Christmas, but to give you an idea if we had to buy everything this is what the stats would read.

1,030 Christmas hampers, 234 normal hampers, £25,000 worth of new presents. Add 288 top up bags which would normally have gone in landfill. In total along with 2,000 volunteer hours, we valued all that work in 16 days at £161,750, which is amazing.

 We are so so grateful; we could not it do without you. There are so many people to thank and to name them all would take too long and also, I don’t want to forget someone’s name or I’ll be in big trouble. You know who you are and from the bottom of our hearts we thank you.
Personally, I’m so grateful to every single person who volunteered this Christmas and obviously throughout the year, but at Christmas we get the chance to meet people who come every year like the ladies from the Sikh temple and the ladies who come as a team from the children’s centre, and every other individual who comes.

Please continue to pray for us as we go into next year, as we seek Gods will for us regarding chasing development funding for the building (if we get it) and totally separately, seek core funding. Our priority, which is and always will be, is feeding our hungry neighbours.

These lines of funding are totally different to each other. To develop the building vision, we have to apply to different funders. Likewise, our bread and butter funding for food and running costs cannot be used for development.

So please pray for us as we tackle the next stage of our journey.

We know our work is growing and shows no signs of slowing down. We also need a place of our own, which is big enough for our purposes and somewhere we can develop into a great space for our community which will be open to all.

Thank you again. 
As I write this on the 5 January, we are 4 working days into 2024 and we are up to150 referrals already. Bit worrying but God has got us this far.

Praise God always

Gordon