Give a gift 2022 is in full swing and as we look back at the past couple of years we are blown away by how Gateway Church and the Ashford community has risen to meet this need as well as the impact that this project has on the families in and around Ashford.
We have heard multiple stories over the past couple of years of this project that have encouraged our hearts, but there are two in particular that stand out.
The first is of a little girl whose mum had told her that they wouldn’t be able to afford the present that she wanted for Christmas that year, to open the donated presents on Christmas morning to find the gift that she’d asked for staring back at her, her mum was blown away and the little girl was obviously over the moon.
The second is of a family with a terminally ill parent whose Christmas over lockdown in 2020 was likely to have been their last with the family. Because it was lockdown and providing a memorable experience for them was out of the question, instead we were able to source a giant bag of board games for the family so that they could remember the last with this parent as one full of games and laughter.
Those stories encourage us that we are doing something that is sharing God’s heart with our community as well as showing the community around us something of God’s generosity which He has shared by sending His own son as a gift to the world.
The need to support families who were struggling to provide gifts for their children at Christmas began in a COVID lockdown but has continued on far after restrictions have lifted and people have returned to ‘normal’ and even more so now that we are in the throes or a cost of living crisis.
This is shown so clearly in the numbers of children referred to us by schools, as the numbers have increased dramatically. In 2020 we provided 282 gifts for 94 children. Last year in 2021 we saw those numbers almost triple to providing 969 gifts for 326 children and this year we are looking at our biggest task yet as we are looking to provide 1488 gifts to the 496 children which have been referred to us.
We have received generous donations from councillors Bill Barret and Kalysha Howard-Smith which go a long way towards making up for any shortfall we may have in the gifts but the vast majority of gifts are still made up by the generous donations of the members of Gateway Church and the Ashford community which we are all part of.
If you would like to get involved in this fantastic project then you can do so in a couple of ways, you can either:
Buy gifts with a value of no more than £15 and bring them to The Riverside Centre (Clockhouse, TN23 4YN) between 9am and 3pm Monday-Friday before Friday 2nd December.
You can donate money by bank transfer with the reference ‘Give a gift’.
You can find both a list of present ideas for age groups as well as all the details of how to give on our website by visiting www.gatewaychurchashford.co.uk/giveagift or www.gatewaychurchashford.co.uk/giving if you would like our bank details.
We will also be running wrapping parties to get the gifts wrapped and ready to deliver on Sunday 4th, Monday 5th, Wednesday 7th & Thursday 8th December in the evenings between 7:30 and 9pm, so if you would like to be part of those then you will be able to sign up via our website or you can contact Sam on: sam.kendell@gatewaychurchashford.co.uk with what date you would like to be a part of.
Then the second week of December the gifts will be delivered to schools to give to parents.
Join us in giving a gift this Christmas.
Gateway Church Ashford | 01233 638866 | office@gatewaychurchashford.co.ukwww.gatewaychurchashford.co.uk | The Riverside Centre, Clockhouse, Ashford, Kent, TN23 4YN
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