Prison fellowship: Angel Tree project

Would you like to help Prison Fellowship in Durham show the love of Jesus by sending out gifts to children whose mums will be in HMP Low Newton this Christmas?

Last year we and Bethel Church Chester-le-Street co-ordinated the Angel Tree Project, enabling 41 gifts to be sent out to children on behalf of their parent in HMP Low Newton.

Here are a couple of responses from mums whose children received a gift from us last Christmas:

"Thanks for helping me use the angel tree this Christmas to send gifts to my boys. it meant a lot to me and my boys out there, it's a lovely thing you do."

"When I came into prison I felt so alone and felt like I had brought shame on my family. Then when Christmas was approaching I was upset I couldn't buy my daughter anything and I was told about the angel gift. We filled in a form and my daughter got a lovely gift from me."

This is how it works… If you'd like to be involved, you'll be given details of one child's gift to buy (up to a value of £10). We then wrap all the presents and add gift tags written by their mums. The presents are then delivered. You are welcome to donate towards a gift if you prefer not to shop!

If you are able to buy a requested gift, or contribute towards a gift, or would like to find out more about Angel Tree please see / email Helen Hunter or Stephen Jones. Your involvement is really appreciated! If you would like to find out more about Prison Fellowship and / or volunteering, please see Helen / Stephen or check out the PF website.

Meet our interns!

We’re very blessed to have three wonderful interns serving the church this year: Rachel, Becki and Jonny.

Here’s a video they made to tell us a bit about themselves and what they’ll be doing

'A chain made for dancing'...

One of our FP interns, Rachel, loves to create prophetic art - pictures communciated to her by God. During her FP yer, she’ll be doing various prophetic art projects.

She writes…

“Prophetic art is just another way of hearing God, through pictures. You may have seen me on Sunday with an easel. This is what I was doing…

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“This is what God was saying to me through the picture:

On Tuesday my Dad had visited and dropped off some stuff. On Saturday night I was slightly stressed and I’d been looking through it to find something and found that my nan had slipped a golden chain mail fancy dress belly dancing costume into my packing. I just immediately felt joy, and as I looked at it, this ridiculous costume looked like armour. But this armour wasn’t a weight; it was made for dancing. I felt like God was saying that sometimes putting on our daily armour can become something heavy and solemn, but that actually it was made for joy and for freedom. So this is supposed to be the chain mail links of armour, but with tassels because the armour God has given me was made for dancing!

If any of you are interested in having a go at prophetic art, I’ll be running a workshop on Saturday 2nd November in The Durham Centre, 10:30am to 12pm, straight after the Prayer Breakfast, so feel free to also come for the prayer meeting then stay for prophetic art. It will mostly be practical but also just give more of an idea as to what this is all about.