Appeal at North Bradley is labour of love (From Wiltshire Times)
Get involved! Send photos, video, news & views. Text WILTS TIMES to 80360 or email us
Trowbridge RSS Feed Send your news, pictures & videos
Appeal at North Bradley is labour of love
2:00pm Saturday 13th November 2010 in Trowbridge By Rachel Allen
North Bradley Ladies Bible Studies Group members, from left, Rachel Martin, Carole Sparks, Ruth Slade, Margaret Cook, Dorothy Jones, Ron Davies and Kate Andrews with their shoeboxes
A congregation in North Bradley has worked together once again to fill as many shoeboxes as possible for Operation Christmas Child.
Worshippers at North Bradley Baptist Church have been taking part in the annual appeal for more than 15 years and are still going strong after handing more than 79 wrapped boxes full of gifts over to Operation Christmas Child volunteers.
Items are collected for the boxes throughout the year and in November North Bradley Ladies Bible Studies Group put the boxes together.
Group leader Kate Andrews, 48, of Trowbridge, said: “The whole congregation gets involved by bringing in a specific item each month and in November we put the boxes together.
“We originally got involved through volunteer Judith Whalley who showed us a heart-wrenching video of underprivileged children. It spurred us on as we have so much in this country and to just see the joy on their faces when they received the boxes was enough.”
The congregation is one of many groups filling shoeboxes for children in underprivileged countries.
Volunteer Mrs Whalley said: “We have had such an amazing response and have collected more than 1,000 boxes so far. North Bradley Baptist Church is brilliant, the congregation has been supporting us for years. It’s nice because they do it as a community.”
She added that she would encourage people to get their boxes in as soon as possible as they are being shipped on a weekly basis.
The campaign runs until Thursday, November 18.
