All Saints Church set to take part in Archbishops' Call to Prayer for the nation

The congregation of All Saints Church is being asked to respond and take part in a national Call to Prayer for England which has been launched by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Every Church of England parish is being invited to join the Archbishops in a week of prayer for the evangelisation of the nation. The Archbishops are wanting to see a great wave of prayer across England in the week leading up to Pentecost (8th - 15th May).

Listen here to All Saints Church's Rector, Canon David Hodgson, talking about how All Saints Church could take part.

There is more information about the Call to Prayer on its website

Cakes to welcome new residents

Freshly baked cakes are waiting to be distributed to residents of Wokingham's new housing areas as a welcome gift from Wokingham's churches.

Happy Birthday to Her Majesty the Queen

 

The Union flag is flying from All Saints Church Tower today for the Queen's 90th birthday.

HOME COMMUNION TEAM LUNCH

On Sunday 14^th February the Home Communion Team hosted a lunch in The Cornerstone with a Valentine’s Day theme – hearts and the colour red!

Invitations were sent out to those whom we visited, and the 8am and 11.15am congregations.  We were delighted to receive 23 acceptances so with the table hosts and volunteers 32 people sat down for lunch.

The guests were welcomed with a glass of prosecco or orange juice and we were able to sit down and have a good chat before lunch.  They had all been allocated a place at a table and two table hosts. 

The lunch was a 2-course meal of either chicken casserole or shepherd’s pie served with vegetables.  The desserts were plentiful and the guests could choose from steamed pudding, fresh fruit salad, apple crumble or rhubarb meringue.  The meal finished with coffee and a chocolate.

There was no extra entertainment – guests entertained one another admirably and the noise and laughter was a great tonic for us all.  It was an extremely enjoyable occasion.

All Saints to host Christian Aid Week United service

Christian Aid Week news
All Saints Church will host Wokingham churches' Christian Aid Week service on Sunday 15th May. A special ecumenical service in the evening will include a visiting speaker to be announced. More details to follow.

All Saints' Christian Aid rep Peter Barrett said: "If you want to take action for the world's poorest communities then why not join our team of house-to-house collectors in Christian Aid Week. If you can't collect, think about hosting a coffee morning, or a Big Breakfast, or get sponsored for the walk around Bix, near Henley.Please see me for more details."

All Saints' Cambodian church link charity founder visits London

Chomno In  CEO and founder of Cambodian Hope Organisation (CHO) was in London earlier this month to meet UK church leaders. The Cambodian Hope Organisation (CHO) is a Christian NGO based in Poipet, Cambodia. It is linked with the UK church-based agency TearFund. CHO's projects involve community transformation, church transformation and business enterprise. 

Since a member of All Saints Church, Peter Barrett,visited CHO in Cambodia several years ago to see its work at first-hand, All Saints Church has supported the charity with a regular annual donations. See a video about how it's work tackles human trafficking, or visit its website.

Leading adoption charity PACT thanks All Saints Church for support

PACT would like to thank All Saints Wokingham for your continued support. We are hugely grateful for your daily prayers, awareness raising and fundraising for PACT charity.

As you may know, PACT was founded by the Oxford Diocese in 1911 and has been supporting and strengthening families ever since. PACT provides award winning community support to vulnerable families across the Thames Valley, supporting families on issues including domestic abuse, debt, mental health and parenting. PACT also provides an ‘outstanding’ (Ofsted 2014) adoption service including specialist therapeutic support for adopting families.

PACT would like to take this opportunity to update you on what we have achieved recently. 

PACT’s Bounce Back 4 Kids (BB4K) programme for children and parents who have been victims or witnesses of domestic abuse has achieved excellent outcomes and plans to extend d the service which currently operates in Oxfordshire and West Berkshire into Wokingham. PACT supported 61 children and their non-abusing parent through the BB4K programme in 2015 and hopes to support even more vulnerable families in 2016. We believe that with the correct effective support in place for the parent and for the child, we can build resilience, help to keep the family safe, educate them against entering into another abusive relationship in the future and help the healing process so that families have the best chance of improving their lives.

PACT’s award winning community project for women continues to receive new referrals from women with complex needs who have reached crisis point. Alana House supports an average of 70 women per month and helps them to turn their lives around and become contributing members of society.

In 2015, PACT placed 92 children with their ‘forever families’ and provided 1313 hours of therapeutic support to vulnerable adoptive families. The therapeutic support provided  included counselling, Theraplay, clinical psychology, life story work, creative play therapy, homeopathy, dyadic developmental psychotherapy, filial therapy, occupational therapy, art psychotherapy and drama therapy which help children to overcome difficulties in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood which have resulted from childhood developmental trauma and neglect. 

For more information on PACT and the services offered please visit www.pactcharity.org.

We hope that that you will continue to support PACT individually as well as through the church. If you or a friend or family member works for an organisation who may be able to support PACT please do get in touch: laura.senior@pactcharity.org

Thank you