Lent Appeal 2023 – Tools with a Mission

Every Sunday during the season of Lent (apart from March 19th), I will be in the Church Hall after Eucharist, with boxes and bags to collect your unwanted tools and donate them to the excellent charity Tools with a Mission. They collect the tools we no longer want and deliver them to Africans who desperately need them – a simple yet brilliant idea, which is eco-friendly to boot.

You can find a full list of what TWAM does and doesn’t want here:

https://www.twam.uk/donatetools?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_9e2qpGY_QIVR57tCh1DDwv6EAAYASABEgIKl_D_BwE

By the way, their definition of tool is pretty broad – it encompasses Bibles in plain English (presumably not King James), so if you have any of those, they would also be very gratefully received.

Please get in touch with me at {This email is obscured. Your must have javascript enabled to see it} if you would like to donate tools and/or Bibles, as it will help me to get a reasonable idea of how many boxes and bags I’ll need! Please do consult the webpage mentioned above, as there is quite a list of things they don’t want. Finally, please bear in mind that I have limited storage space, so I can’t accept anything much larger than a small sewing machine or a laptop computer.

I must say I’m really looking forward to this collection – many thanks in advance for all your donations!

James
Eco Church Rep

Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Lent

Do you have ideas for tasty, easy meat-free meals?

It is now clear that meat production is making an important contribution to climate change, and one thing we can all do to reduce its impact is eat less meat. Lent is traditionally a time when Christians give up eating meat, and the Deanery Eco-group wants to help people change their eating habits to include less meat by collecting and publishing ideas for tasty meat free meals for people to try during Lent. 

These may be vegetarian or vegan recipes or just a cooking idea – for example did you know that custard made with custard powder actually tastes better if you use soya milk instead of ordinary milk?

So that we can organise and make them available in time for Lent please send your ideas to petertoon@aol.com as soon as possible, and by 14th February at the latest.  

Peter D Toon

Recycling

Thanks to all those who have brought in pill blister packs for recycling. We got three boxes full in the first fortnight, far more than expected. 

Please keep up the good work with this scheme. There are two other specific recycling schemes in aid of charity you might like to take part in:

Inkjet cartridges – in aid of National Trust – just deliver to Ilona DeSousa (idesouza@btinternet.com) at 10 Claremont Place, Wincheap, CT1 3SU.  OK to post them through the door.

Crisp packets – being collected by Wildwood wildwoodtrust.org – just deliver during opening hours. 

If you want to recycle these but delivering them is difficult or would involve an ecologically unfriendly special trip please contact petertoon@aol.com or phone 01227 451 991 to discuss other possible arrangements

An Eco-friendly Church – UPDATE!

As a next step in becoming a more ecologically aware and environmentally friendly church, may I invite you to an informal meeting on Thursday 29th April at 7.00 pm.  The meeting will be open to anyone, but could I ask that you email priest@ststephenscanterbury.net so that I can send a personal Zoom invitation.  There are some Eco-Church events coming up in the diocese on the 8th and 13th May and you can find more details about these on the Canterbury Diocese website.  Please let me know if you would like to play a part in these important next steps.

With many thanks and every blessing,
Kevin

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