Our shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child have now been collected. Last year we sent in 106 boxes. This year, we set ourselves the ambitious target of sending in 200. In the end, we managed 162, which is a really good achievement. 200 was always intended to be a somewhat stretching challenge to work towards.

We couldn't have done it without a lot of help. A lot of people in the village took part, not just thsoe who come to church week by week. Thank you to all of you.

We also had help from around the village. Kemsing Primary School, the village library, and the Dynes Road Dry Cleaners all helped. They were happy to store information leaflets and flat-packed boxes for people to collect. They were happy to act as drop-off points, so that people could conveniently hand in their completed boxes. Thank you to those three village organisations for all of your help.

We tried to watch a video last Sunday to give us a taste of where the boxes go. The technology gremlins meant we never got to watch it - we had picture but no sound. :-(. The video shows how Operation Christmas Child have been able to return to Liberia, a country they had been unable to visit because of Ebola. The joy and hope that this brings is worth watching. Here it is: