Wednesday 12 September 2007

New Term

Next week Storehouse will be represented at West Suffolk College freshers event, run over the Wednesday and Thursday from 10 – 2. Please pray that this will be a positive event for those representing Storehouse and WSVC and for the staff and students with whom they come into contact.
Last year several local schools and churches kindly donated the non-perishable items collected at their harvest festivals to Storehouse. If your school is having a harvest assembly this autumn and would like to donate its non-perishable food to Storehouse we will happily provide them with information about what we do and collect any food that they would like to give us. We might also be able to give a short talk at their assembly about Storehouse if we are able to arrange that. If your school would be interested please get them to contact the Vineyard Centre. Thank you.

Requests update

As you, through Storehouse, continue to give away food and toiletries to those in need around Bury St Edmunds and West Suffolk, so the need to have the donations that you bring to Church and the Vineyard Centre replaced continues. At the moment the items that we are running low on are:

  • ANY food that can be eaten without heating
  • Tinned meat etc
  • Tinned vegetables of any kind
  • Pasta, rice, instant mash etc
  • Tinned fruit and other desserts
  • Small bags of sugar and small cartons of long life milk
  • Small boxes of cereals, or larger packets that can be split hygienically
  • Toiletries of any kind

Thank you

Wednesday 5 September 2007

No cooking facilities

We've had someone come to us who has had to sell their cooker and washing machine in order to sort out financial issues. If anyone has or knows of a good condition electric cooker, microwave or washing machine that would be available then please contact Jonathan, or Geoff & Maggie (Helping Hands). Thank you.

August stats and requests update

During August Storehouse received 36 requests for food bags resulting in 45 food bags being given away through 9 local agencies plus some non-agency requests. Please keep your donations of food and toiletries coming in - we are so grateful for every single item. Even if it is only one or two cans, it can soon add up and does make a real difference. In particular at the moment we are in need of cereals, long life milk, sugar, pasta, rice, instant mashed potato and any kind of toiletries. Thank you.

Tuesday 4 September 2007

God of Justice


Tim Hughes' latest Album, "Holding Nothing Back" has a great track (no. 7) entitled God of Justice, where Tim sings passionately about following the example of Jesus in serving the poor, the needy and the broken. Here's Tim's story behind the song:
God Of Justice
In June 2005, my wife Rachel and I headed off to Tanzania, to spend a week working with Tearfund, a charity based in England. Whilst there we met an amazing lady called Joyce. We visited her home in Uhambingeto, met with her family and heard her story. With no clean accessible water in the village, leaving each night at midnight with an empty container, Joyce would walk for over ten hours until she returned home at around 10am the following morning exhausted. It has been estimated that Joyce has walked the equivalent of three times around the world in the pursuit of water. The injustice of this is overwhelming. . How could that still be possible in a world today where so many of us have so much?
When I read the bible, one thing seems abundantly clear; God is passionate about the poor. Jesus made it so clear … “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor (Luke 4:18) In Amos 5, God’s heart burns with anger as He rebukes a people who offer up songs of worship and other choice offerings, but trample and deprive the poor for their own selfish gain. We can’t escape the truth – God’s heart breaks for the last, the least and the lost. If I want to glorify God in all that I do, then issues of justice and the poor need to be at the core of who I am.
The Church needs to be singing about God’s heart for the poor. We need to remind ourselves that as God’s people we need to go and serve the marginalised. All of this inspired the song. It’s a worship song. It’s a justice song.
This echoes why care for the poor is a prominent part of what we, as a church, do, and it's something that we can all take part in, even in small ways here in Bury St Edmunds. There is a great review of the album on the St Andrews Bookshop website where Tim has also written the stories behind some of the other songs, so please check out the album - it should also be available on the CD desk at church. We've sung quite a few of the songs at church over the last few months and I'm sure you'll enjoy the whole album. If you would like a preview then click here for a link to MP3 samples of each track, or view this particular one on a Tearfund video at Youtube.