Transformation Thurrock : Seafarers' parcels and Christmas Child Shoeboxes

Seafarers' parcels and Christmas Child Shoeboxes - Thurrock responds in thousands

Two of the Christmas Appeals championed by Transformation Thurrock have had a huge response from the borough's people.

The Seafarers' Mission Christmas Parcel Appeal saw the good folk at West Thurrock Chapel packed somewhere in the region of 1000 parcels of toiletries and woollens donated by people across the borough (left).

Port Chaplain Paul Cave was extremely happy with the effort. "I would like to thank everyone who gave," he said, "and the team at the Chapel who worked so hard".

Paul is now distributing the parcels to seafarers who find themselves moored in Tilbury Freeport or at one of the many jetties along our river bank, many miles from their homes around the world.

Meanwhile, an enormous pile of shoe boxes were collected by Thurrock Christian Fellowship's John Dell on behalf of Samaritan's Purse for their Christmas Child Appeal.

John reported that over 2000 boxes were collected, the bulk of them from Grays Baptist Church (right), where a line of folk passed the boxes from the front of the church through the back rooms and out to the truck parked in the alleyway off Hathaway Road. He then took the load to a depot at Woodford where all the shoe boxes would be individually checked.

During the gathering of the shoe boxes, Grays Baptist's Jean Catton fell and broke her arm while moving some of the boxes. Jean has been overseeing the shoe box collection point at the church for a number of years and was extremely frustrated to find herself out of action. One operation later and she's now on the road to recovery.

Pictures below
Left: Sue Livermore with just one of the hundreds of shoe boxes
Centre: John Dell loading the van
Right: Iain Sear from Besom and the Grays Bar'N'Bus Team exchange the first box to be loaded

Tim Harrold, 05/12/2011