HOPE Church mobilises for local community
Last week HOPE Church in Craigavon distributed over 100 ‘essential grocery’ parcels to their local community. The boxes included items from washing powder to breakfast cereal and hand wash to tinned food.
The recipients’ details were provided by local community groups and included the elderly, housebound, single parents and socially disadvantaged.
Each parcel contained around £40 of groceries from Tesco.
Revd Craig Cooney, Minster–in Charge of HOPE commented: “It was such a great experience for our church to be mobilised at this difficult time to reach out into the local community. We received many messages after the distribution of the parcels thanking us.
“One person wrote: ‘I would like to thank you all for the food parcel you sent me, it was wonderful. I split it with two of my family members as well – a widowed man, a pensioner was glad of the bits and pieces and a single pensioner mum. You are so kind, it’s lovely to know people are thinking of me. I’m disabled with MS, wheelchair–bound. I have been in isolation for 18 weeks. It has been a hard road, but to know there are people like you I thank God. Thank you all so much.’ Another simply wrote: ‘Thank you for thinking about others outside your own congregation.’”
Pictured above, Revd Craig Cooney