Firstly, when brought up at our Autumn business meeting 2023, Porthleven Ecclesia agreed it would be good to take an active part in this year’s project, rather than just donate financially.
We approached St Petroc’s Breadline Centre in Penzance asking if the Survival Socks project would be of help to them over Christmas. They were really touched and said we were the only organisation that had approached them this Winter with such an offer. We found out that they have around 24 homeless in Penzance, 12 transient (hopefully short-term) and 12 long-term clients. We also discussed the contents of the socks so it was really helpful seeing a list of items you had thought through already. They agreed these were all really helpful plus gave us a few
extra ideas.
Thank you COG for agreeing to fund 24 pairs of socks at £10 per pair - these were sent via Amazon straight away which gave us the go ahead. As an Ecclesia, we wanted to financially provide for the contents of the socks so a small working group were delegated to research the items we wished to purchase to see how much it would all come to. The LORD is good, and wonderfully, a collection brothers and sisters made prior to Christmas provided over and above our list, so we were able to extend our list. Even a dog walker Sister Ali met one day donated money for the socks when Ali told her about it, plus a work colleague when he got to hear!!!
We realised that all of these items wouldn’t fit into a pair of socks so decided to make drawstring bags and amazingly, materials were gifted to us in just the right quantity. Again: thanks to the Lord’s provision!! We had a lovely morning with a group of sisters and their sewing machines preparing the bags, with labels produced by a brother to be sewn into the bags.
Small hand sanitiser
Small pack of wet wipes
Small pack of tissues
Roll on deodorant
Vaseline lip balm
Toothbrush
Small toothpaste
Multi-vitamins (30)
Small hand cream for dry hands
Pack of chewing gum
Comb
Pen - Ali found lovely ones with Bible verses on
Pocket crossword book
Chocolate bar
Hot chocolate sachet
Small pack Haribo sweets
Box of raisins
x4 protein crunch
Pack of nuts
We wrote a message on the back of an old Christmas card to go in each
bag from us too.
The Sunday before Christmas after our Breaking of Bread meeting, lots of brothers and sisters helped to fill up the bags. They were dropped off at St
Petroc’s over the Christmas weekend.
Thank you for being a catalyst to this outreach project. We really enjoyed working together and to feel we were helping our local community, be it a drop in the ocean. We know the problems in the world are immense, but it does seem better to do something than nothing until Jesus comes as King with God’s power to change things.
