I am writing this having just returned from my final night shift this year with the Peterborough Winter Night Shelter.
Peterborough Winter Night Shelter is a project set up in order to provide additional beds over the winter for the homeless people in and around Peterborough. Over the course of the winter the project has provided over 500 beds to around 50 different guests. It has been based in 7 churches in the area including St. Mary’s Stilton where I have been volunteering. St. Mary’s have done a brilliant job of hosting as I imagine have the other 6 churches. Part of the motivation for the project is to provide hospitality to and bring hope to those who are homeless.
Back in February I was part of a group of 12 people from St. Peter’s who went to Rwanda. We were involved in several projects including building a house for a single mum called Costasie. Costasie had been ‘squatting’ with family and friends for years having no home of her own. Here is a short video of Costasie greeting us and then receiving the keys to the house. I guarantee this will warm your hearts.
My thanks to all of you who helped to fund the cost of this house which has brought new hope to Costasie and her family. We also visited Taciana for whom we built a house on our last visit three years ago. She told me that, after three years, she is only just getting used to the fact that no one comes to collect her rent at the end of each month. Again, her house has given her new hope from a very difficult past.
This month we remember that Jesus died for the whole world, every one of us, and that he rose again. Jesus’ resurrection gives us basis for the Christian faith and the certain and new hope that there is a better future for us all. Sometimes we will see a glimpse of this better future in this life. For all of us this better future is not realised fully until the life which is to come. As CS Lewis writes in The Last Battle, the final book in the Narnia series, “All their life in this world […] had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
You would be more than welcome to join us to remember Jesus’ death on Good Friday at 11.00am and to celebrate his resurrection on Easter Sunday, April 16th, also at 11.00am. For details of our other services or those in other local churches please contact me.
May you know the joy and hope of the risen Jesus Christ this Easter and always.
With my prayers,
Jon Randall (Vicar) 01733 240339; vicar@saintpeters.co.uk
Read this article in the Yaxley Gazette.