 St James' Five Ring Fair
This year's St James' Fair had an Olympic theme with all the stalls representing a different country
For a flavour of some of the stalls, the fancy dress entrants and some Olympic Torch bearer pictures click here.
To date, the Fair has raised in excess of £2800, an increase of over £200 on last year's total.
Seed Update
As a follow-up to our appeal sent a fortnight ago, I am delighted to announce that we are now able to offer match funding for the first £200 of new monthly donations set up in aid of The SEED Project.
This means that, if you set up a monthly donation to SEED now, our generous donor will match it, donating the same monthly amount as yours.
The donor will only give as much as our supporters do, so you can help SEED to unlock up to a fantastic £400 per month to bring a (sustainably) better quality of life for Zimbabwean communities!
What is more, this donor is especially keen to see SEED attract new supporters from the large number of people who follow our progress but do not yet give regularly. The guarantee is good for a minimum of 12 months but will be extended by one month for every new supporter donating at least £10/month. Therefore if just 12 new supporters join us, the guarantee will last 2 years, or if 24 do, it will last 3 years.
Regular donations are the holy grail of charity work; they help us to budget and plan, as well as enabling innovation and flexible response to need. Your support is needed now, and will be used responsibly to empower Zimbabwean communities to build their own way out of poverty.
This is a fantastic opportunity! Please help us to make the most of it, by setting up a monthly donation. You can use the attached form, or do it all online here.
In advance, thank you!
Kind regards,
Marie
Harvest
St James celebrated Harvest on Sunday 14th October with a Harvest Festival Family Service and a Harvest Lunch. There were many non-perishable gifts donated during the service which will be deliverd to the Salvation Army for distribution to the needy and homeless. Our harvest Lunch was a bring and share lunch with a lovely selection of hot and cold food enjoyed by all that attended.
Faith, Hope and Love - a vision day for St James
St James held a Vision day on Saturday 13th to help formulate our response to Bishop Christopher's Lent Call of Faith, Hope and Love. This session looked at how we see ourselves as a church, as a community and our place within the wider community. More details will follow of the various initiatives that have arisen from this exercise. The main thrust of our first steps will be to formulate, produce and deliver a questionaire to all stakeholders to find out what they would like St James to look like and how they would like to see St James working within the community - this will include the current and future shape of and uses of the church buildings. We will also explore the various costings and possibilities for a new Church Hall building. We are keen to involve as diverse a cross section of our worshipping and non-worshipping community in these decisions, so if you would like to be involved in the task forces set up to look at these issues please contact Christine the Vicar.
St James Arts and Crafts Exhibition
Our annual Arts and Crafts exhibition was very successful this year with many first time exhibitors and we sold over 12% of those works we had for Sale. Exhibits included paintings and models as well as demonstrations of some "quirky models" that proved very popular. The Teas and Ploughmans Lunches were also well patronised and overall over £200 was raised for church funds with another £100 raised by the refreshments to go towards the Fair. You can see some of the many exhibits we had on display on the Photos page.
St James' Day BBQ and Mini Olympics
You can see pictures of our successful (if slightly damp!) St,James' Day Celebrations on the Photo Gallery page
Simeon Wood Plays
On 20 May Flautist Simeon Wood helped our spirits ascend with his wit and music as we celebrated Ascension Day.You can hear what he played for us on the audio page here
You can find out more about Simeon and listen to his beatiful playing at:www.simeonwood.com.
Seed Project Visit
 Jackson, Marie Nazombe and their children from the SEED PROJECT visited us for a series of events. They spoke at a Youth Social Evening on Saturday 12th May where over 40 young people found out about life in Zimbabwe today and how they could make a difference. The evening was full of fun as well as lots of new information. You can see some pictures of the event here
Jackson - with help from Joshua and Chiedza, spoke at the 9.45 Service on 13th May and afterwards there was a bring and share lunch. If you would like to know more about the work of The SEED Project, you can visit their website here
St. James' Gift Day
Our gift day, to raise money for the essential Gable Work on the Church currently taking place has raised a total of over £11,000 to date. It is not too late to donate - see our on-line giving information on the Support Us page
The Bridge Magazine
We are featured on the Parish Profile page of the March edition of The Bridge. Pick up a copy in Church or you can view it on-line here
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