Harvest: Seeds of Hope

At this month’s Church4All service on 4 October 2015, we celebrated Harvest by exploring how seeds of hope can help those in need. As well as offering food for Bingley Food Bank we also offered our teddy bears!

Project Paddington is a charity developed by a group of Sheffield mums as a way for children to respond to the growing humanitarian crisis amongst refugees and displaced people. Our children at St Michael’s decided to send one of their own teddy bears to a refugee child to show that they care.

The children each brought a teddy to church and wrote out a message on a label and tied it to the bear. One child’s message read “I’m sending you this teddy and I hope you like it. I’ve enjoyed playing with him and I hope you love him as much as I did.” The children then made collection boxes in the shape of tents and collected sponsorship money to send the bears on their long journey.

The grown ups also joined in – Muriel Baines had made a beautiful bear named Brownie crocheted by hand. Muriel was delighted to be sending the bear to a refugee child and hoped it would bring someone some comfort.

Find out how you can be involved in Project Paddington at http://projectpaddington.com/