Your copy of the Newsletter should have a centre insert which will enable you, should you wish, to start giving through Gift Aid, or to alter the amount that you already give. The left hand page should be completed and given to Sam Stevenson, and the right hand page is for you to instruct your bank.

Please consider making this change because the Church can claim 25% return from the HMRC and an additional 3% until 2011.

Sam Stevenson

Fairtrade

The Fairtrade Stall is back!

Every Sunday from 19th October until Christmas you can buy Advent Calendars, Christmas cards, wrapping paper, tree decorations, small gifts, etc. as well as coffee, tea and food items.

And, of course, chocolate! 

Churches Together

Thursday 18th December 6.00pm to 6.30pm

There will be carol singing lead by members of the Town Centre Churches in the Market Square outside Thornton’s. You do not need to be a great singer so come along and swell the numbers at this Christmas time.
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Saturday 20th December 10am to 4.00pm
Shoppers Rest Day

Interact Harrogate is the wider Church and its aim is to hold public interactive inclusive events in and around Harrogate for all ages, free of charge. These events are designed to foster good community relations and to build friendships across all boundaries.  The Council has approved it in principle already, to have the catering van and marquee in the Market Place (outside Body Shop) from about 10 am to about 4 pm to provide free refreshments and a quiet place for shoppers to sit and (I hope) think about the real Christmas.  Other Christmas activities are planned around this event on the day.

What we need
We will need servers in and outside the van, and people to talk to our visitors. 
We will also need HUGE supplies of cake and biscuits/mince pies. 
Please can you try to mobilise friends and church family to help with this?

This is going to be a great day!

If you require any additional information on any of the above events and or if you can help in anyway then please contact me.

Commitment for Life

Working together for Life

Samuel Hembrom has no doubts about the importance of water. ‘The alternative name for water is life’ he says. Until recently the village where he lives in Bangladesh did not have a clean water supply. The people in the village are Christian Adivasis (indigenous people), and are often marginalised by the majority Bengali Muslim population. They asked the local council to provide a tubewell but were refused.

But now the community has learned how to work together to get what they need. Through Christian Aid and Adivasis’ Community Development Association (ASUS) the community came together to form a water council which then decided on the best way of providing clean water for everyone. Samuel explains what happened: ‘ASUS came here and did a survey and then gave demonstrations of the possible options. Before we made the decision, we had some village meetings and discussed it in our families. We also visited other places where ASUS projects were already running.’

The water council decided that they should install a deep tubewell. ‘As a community we manage the well with back-up from ASUS. If the well had been installed by someone else, we wouldn’t feel that it’s our responsibility to maintain it. Because we installed it, we feel it is our responsibility to look after it.’

Clean water should not be a luxury, available only to those who can afford it. It is a basic human right. Commitment for Life helps Bangladeshi communities to work together to assert their rights.

 Each year our Church Meeting chooses a special charity to support over the Christmas period. It was agreed that collections at our various Christmas services this year will go to Zawadi. If you were in church on Sunday 2nd November, you will remember being enchanted by four students from St Aidan’s High School who enthusiastically told us all about their special project called Zawadi. ‘Zawadi’, we were informed, is the Swahili word for ‘gifts’. It was set up by a group of St Aidan’s students in Year 12 who wanted to support the Neema Project.

‘Neema Crafts’ was started in 2003 by the Diocese of Ruaha in Tanzania, and is currently run by Andy and Susie Hart, two CMS missionaries from St Mark’s Church, here in Harrogate. The purpose of the Neema Project is to provide handicrafts training and employment for deaf and physically disabled people in the
Iringa region of Tanzania.

Work has started on the new Neema Crafts Centre which will
provide workshops, physiotherapy rooms and conference rooms for teaching, since many of the disabled workers have missed a lot of schooling. Money is needed to buy equipment for the centre, which will be able to employ over 100 disabled people as well as out-workers. Andy and Susie would like to buy as much equipment as possible locally, which all helps the local economy.