BRENTWOOD Newsletter - Advent 2014

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St Ursula’s, Harold Hill silly drawing competition: Page 6

Marathon men: Page 11

Campaign news: Page 14

CAFOD Brentwood Memorial Mass: Page 15

We wish you all

a happy and Holy Christmas and a peaceful new year

The office will be closed Tuesday, 23 December

and re-opens Monday, 5 January.

Cathedral World Gifts fundraising: Page 3

Welcome to St Bonaventure’s Yr 10 CAFOD group: Page 9

Gre2 EMERGENCIES

ADVENT APPEAL A mother’s love is powerful. Together with your Advent gift, it can even save lives.

Just a few months ago Santa Agripina’s youngest son Jansel had been so sick he’d nearly died. But a CAFOD-supported project meant that help reached Jansel before it was too late.

Sadly, many children in this area of Guatemala have experienced chronic malnutrition, and many children have died – from dehydration caused by diarrhoea, or from insect bites and worm infestations; their bodies so weakened by malnutrition that they cannot fight back.

Donations from CAFOD supporters are hard at work in this community. We are working with Santa’s local parish to run a mobile health clinic where mothers can check how well their children are growing, and receive support such as special food supplements and healthy eating advice to prevent malnutrition. Santa Agripina and her family are rejoicing as Jansel is now a healthy weight and is no longer suffering from malnutrition.

There are many other people in need of your help. To donate go to

http://www.cafod.org.uk/Give/Donate-to-CAFOD/Advent

SYRIA CRISIS Thanks to the immense generosity of our supporters, our appeal has so far raised more than £2.7 million. We have also received £620,000 as our portion from the joint appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee.

As in all our emergency appeals, we intend to spend these funds over three years, supporting people with immediate needs and - where possible - helping people to rebuild their lives for the long term.

As fighting between Kurdish forces and the group known as Islamic State intensifies, we are providing aid to thousands of refugees who have fled into Turkey.

Alan Thomlinson, CAFOD’s Emergency Programme Manager for the Syria Crisis, says: “Turkey was already hosting almost a million Syrian refugees, and the rapid influx of so many more has put over-whelming pressure on towns near the border.

“Many of those who have fled are women, children or older people, and a lot of them arrived with little more than the clothes they were wearing.”

Donate to the Syria crisis appeal at:

www.cafod.org.uk/Give/Donate-to-Emergencies/Syria-Crisis-appeal

ADVENT

3 ADVENT

ADVENT CALENDAR

Our interactive Advent calendar has a reflection and prayer for every day. Each day also has a suggested action that you could take on your own, with your family or as part of your parish or community. Get the calendar and other Advent resources, litany, etc here:

www.cafod.org.uk/Pray/Advent-Calendar

Brentwood Cathedral and Holy Cross Parish, Warley have set themselves a target to raise £4,000 for a Community World Gift of Health Centre. Father Martin Boland writes:

“If every person at Mass gives £1 on each of the Sundays of Advent, then on Christmas Day we will have reached our target. We will truly have something to celebrate”.

St Peter’s school, Billericay has set a target this half term to raise £2000 - £2500 for CAFOD World Gifts. Volunteer Breda Bower writes “I had a fun morning with the reception class. Each year group is holding an event to raise money, and today the reception class had a craft session with parents or grandparents helping to make and decorate a Christmas stocking.

They have a Christmas tree totaliser decorated with items from the World Gifts Catalogue, and at the end of the week, they will have a total of the money raised this week and they will see how many gifts they can buy.”

Buy a World Gift this Christmas and you’ll make a world of difference to people in developing countries

At St Bonaventure’s School, Forest Gate teachers are donating the money they would spend on Christmas cards to each other to buy World Gifts. Last year they raised over £800!

Fr Mark and the Holy Cross parish display

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OUR LADY OF LOURDES - WANSTEAD

NEW CAFOD GROUP

Following Fast Day talks by parish volunteer Pat Pugh (pictured near right handing out the envelopes) and a request for parishioners to be part of a new CAFOD group, 10 people came forward. They have just held their first meeting and have lots of exciting things planned for 2015.

Our Lady of Lourdes is currently raising money for Connect2:El Salvador and has raised over £50,000 through the CAFOD collection boxes.

OUR LADY OF LIGHT - CLACTON

CHURCHES TOGETHER

Barbara Porter (near right) and Maureen Crosby from Our Lady of Light spent an enjoyable day at the “Churches Together” event in Harwich raising awareness of CAFOD’s work, selling some resources and seeking support for our One Climate One World campaign. Barbara said everyone was very warm and friendly.

PARISHES

OUR LADY & ST JOSEPH - STANFORD LE HOPE

CONFIRMATION AND FAST DAY

Confirmation candidates were given the challenge of turning £5 into £10 to support the work of CAFOD or Mary's Meals. They all succeeded over the summer holidays by washing cars, baking cakes and travelling up to London to work in a book shop selling Bibles. Well done guys. We hope you all enjoyed your special day when Bishop Alan visited the parish!

SACRED HEART - SOUTHEND

BOLLYWOOD COMES TO TOWN

Parishioners enjoyed a wonderful curry evening and watched the film ‘Bride and Prejudice’. Over 50 people attended and £270 was raised. This amount will go towards their target of £4,300 to fund a Community World Gift of a Health Clinic and Medical outreach team, over £900 has been raised to date. Thank you to parish volunteers Liam and Sandy for arranging this great event and the Knights of St Columba for their help and support.

Our thanks also to Monica (pictured right) who spoke at two Masses and distributed envelopes for Harvest Fast Day.

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EBOLA CRISIS APPEAL A massive thanks to all the parishes, schools in the diocese who have held collections and to the individuals who have donated to our appeal. So far nearly £45k has been raised in the Diocese. See page 13.

PARISHES

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION PARISH - EPPING

HARVEST SALE

Louise one of the members of the J&P Group sold excess produce from her allotment and raised £98 for Harvest Fast Day. Thanks to CAFOD volunteer Emma Little and the J&P Group for their support. Great idea!

Parish volunteers join us for ‘COFFEE with CAFOD’ It was great to meet parish and school volunteers from the Southend and Basildon areas and share the wonderful things that are happening in their parishes. Joanna and Mary from the Brentwood Office updated everyone on recent events and Irene gave a brief overview on the new campaign — ’One Climate One World’

Thanks to Area co-ordinators, Karen Leyland (Basildon) and Irene Scannell (Southend) for their help. Our next event will be in East London in the new year.

ST THOMAS OF CANTERBURY - WOODFORD GREEN

CHRISTMAS FAYRE ‘HELPS TEACH A

CHILD TO READ’

Many thanks to parish volunteers David and Brenda for organising a stall at their Christmas Fayre. Visitors could win Fairtrade Chocolate on the wheel of fortune, buy World Gifts and a page for 50p in a ‘Help teach a child to read’ book. Three whole books were bought on the day - and a further six books by the Epping Forest Catenians at their recent Clergy Night a few days later. Marathon man Alan Mair visited the stall to sign autographs for supporters”.

Alan, Alan,

David David

and and

BrendaBrenda

PRIMARY SCHOOLS 6

At St Antony’s, Forest Gate schools volunteer John Birbeck was delighted to speak to Year 3 students about the various stages of food production and how we must be careful not to waste food. The school raised over £200 for Harvest Fast Day which was a non-uniform day.

HARVEST FAST DAY - ’The Big Silly Share’ Schools throughout the diocese were asked to look at the

injustices in our global food system. For example there is enough food in the world but one in eight people are still hungry.

This doesn’t make sense. It’s silly. Volunteers explained the word silly in many different ways, Peter with his wonderful array of silly hats, Breda with ‘funny shaped’ vegetables and others looked silly by slipping on a banana skin. Many thanks to our great team of volunteers and to the schools

who fundraised and invited volunteers to their assemblies.

St Ursula’s, Harold Hill raised funds by having a silly drawing competition, using CAFOD materials and attaching a £1 coin to the entries. The competition was organised by the RE monitors who are pictured here with Schools volunteer Peter Jones and his wonderful array of hats.

St John Fisher, Loughton welcomed schools volunteers Angela and Lesley to a recent assembly. They presented a ‘Come dine with me’ scenario sharing bread between different continents to show how unfair distribution of food around the world is.

We also heard from Natalie a Year 6 pupil ... "At the Christmas Bazaar, all the Year 6's did their own version of The Apprentice. They split into groups and each group had to run their own stall. There were Christmas games, cakes and even a chocolate fountain. Altogether they raised over £500 for CAFOD."

Our Lady Immaculate, Chelmsford held a collection and Harvest Raffle and raised £230 for their Connect2:Ethiopia scheme.

Tamiru and Abba Solomon from the Connect2 Community of Sebeya visited the school earlier in the year and their school notice board reminds them of the personal ties they have and to keep the community in their thoughts prayers.

PRIMARY SCHOOLS 7

To book a schools visit or for more information contact CAFOD Brentwood on 020 8502 9722

or email brentwood@cafod.org.uk

A second hand school uniform sale at St Clare’s, Clacton raised £48 for CAFOD.

Julie Lee who organised the sale said: “Uniforms are expensive, so it’s great to help parents here as well as raise money for those overseas and, of course, recycle”. Julie and Cathy Hardiman (pictured right) have been holding sales by the school gates for the last four years on the last Friday of each month.

What a wonderful idea and a great example of ‘live simply’.

St Joseph the Worker, Hutton and Shenfield was visited by schools volunteer Breda Bower who did a Big Share presentation with a "How Silly Is That?" card that she made. One helper held the card and after every 'silly fact' she held up the card and the whole school shouted out "How silly is that?"!! Breda had with her a little Leprechaun, and her first silly fact was about her trying to find one when she was school age - the serious side was that she walked miles and got lots of exercise! The other volunteers held up the mis-shaped vegetables Breda had brought in from her garden and asked which ones tasted best and why.

LENT FAST DAY —FRIDAY 27TH FEBRUARY

Great news, UK Aid Match will double every £1 given during Lent. (More details to follow.)

Focus for schools and parishes will be on Myanmar (Burma)

Schools packs should arrive 5 January and parish packs on 21 January 2015

8

Year 13 at St John Payne, Chelmsford recently held a ‘CAFOD fair’. This involved the students setting up stalls to raise money for CAFOD as part of their General RS programme. The stalls were tremendous, original and engaging. The Year 7 pupils were certainly kept entertained!

As well as home-made cake and sweet stalls there was leg waxing, ‘money balancing’, card games, ‘chilli roulette’, and a ‘chop-stick’ game just to name a few. The event raised £160 for CAFOD. Thanks to all involved.

At Trinity Catholic High, Woodford Green, Year 9 pupil Kayla recently gave a presentation to her class and talked about all the different aid CAFOD provides to developing countries during times of need. Pupils discussed how they could help fundraise in the future. Everyone loved her presentation. Thank you Kayla!

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

St Angela's, Forest Gate 6th Form CAFOD Group visited Romero House and met Sarah Barber from the CAFOD Schools Team.

Tutor Jo Vassiliou said: “We had a fantastic day, so many people gave up their time to talk to us. There were a number of great activities for us and we got to see the Cathedral with the Romero Cross. Just amazing the students are truly inspired. Thank you.”

9 SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Give Hope, Fight Poverty — Diocesan J&P Schools Day Over 130 young people from 11 schools* across the Diocese came together at New Hall School to hear about poverty at home led by former MP, John Battle and poverty overseas during a CAFOD workshop. Thank you to Davina Bolt, CJSR, for organising the day, Fr Dan and Fr Anthony for the opening and closing liturgies and New Hall for their hospitality.

* Trinity, St Bonaventure’s, New Hall, Grays, St Mark’s, St Benedict’s, The Campion School, Palmer Academy,

De la Salle, Sacred Heart of Mary and Holy Family Catholic College.

Doug Mongan is the new Chaplain at All Saints, Dagenham.

Here’s Doug highlight-ing the Harvest Fast Day noticeboard.

Thank you to Ilford Ursuline who held a music concert and raised £250. We will be going along to an Assembly later in the term to give a personal thank you.

Welcome to the Yr 10 CAFOD Group at St Bonaventure’s, Forest Gate. They led an Advent assembly for all year groups and also ran the cake stall at a recent Yr 9 parents evening. More fundraising planned for 2015. Pleasure to meet you!

Two sessions with Yr 13 All Saints, Dagenham looked more deeply into the Ebola situation and also a work-shop on World Gifts. All Saints have raised over £70,000 for World Gifts over the past 10 years!

Following a cake sale and nail art session, the 6th form CAFOD group at St Angela’s, Forest Gate presented Denise with a cheque for £150.

Yr 10 St Angela’s, Forest Gate, produced a “blanket of justice” during their RE retreat day.

A big thank you to all our volunteers who promote CAFOD’s work in Parishes and Schools, and of course the volunteers who come into the office.

We’d like to welcome Angela (left) who comes into the office to help with the administration behind school visits. And on a sad note, we’re

really sorry to say goodbye to education volunteer Joan (right). She has done a

sterling job in the three years she has been volunteering and will be greatly missed. Also, thank you to Mike who volunteered in schools

during 2014 and has now returned to employment.

VOLUNTEERS

Could you give a few hours a week to CAFOD

and join our team of school volunteers

and bring the work of CAFOD and social justice to life?

What we offer

Full training and support

Opportunity to work with primary and/or secondary schools throughout the Diocese

Comprehensive resources including power points, presentations and engaging activities

The chance to utilise your valuable skills working with children and teachers

Forthcoming dates

Understanding CAFOD at Amigo Hall, SE1 - Saturday 24th January

Schools Training at Amigo Hall, SE1 - Thursdays 5th & 19th February

Telephone Joanna or Denise in the Brentwood office for more details

Enhanced DBS (Safeguarding) will be required

Understanding CAFOD Day Saturday, 24th January 2015

Your chance to learn all you need to know about volunteering

Who we are - What we stand for - Where we work

How we campaign - How we work with volunteers

Amigo Hall (Next to St. George’s Cathedral)

Lambeth Road, London SE1 7HY

Phone or email the CAFOD Brentwood Office for more details

10

A RACE FOR JUSTICE - SIX MAJOR MARATHONS Having now successfully competed marathon runs in Paris (6 April), London (13 April), Berlin (28 September), Chicago (12 October) and New York (2 November), Alan Mair - parishioner at St Thomas of Canterbury and Head of RE at Trinity Catholic High, Woodford Green - has now achieved five of the six major world marathons this year.

Parishioners have so far donated over £1000 to Alan's "Race for Justice" programme in support jointly of CAFOD and Brentwood Catholic Children's Society. The final event in the series is Tokyo on 23 February.

If you would like to sponsor Alan please go to his donation site

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/alanmair63

TERRY RACES AGAINST POVERTY 41 year old Terry McMahon, an engineer from Ilford joined 25,000 runners who pounded the streets of Portsmouth for the Great South Run on Sunday 26 October. He completed the course in one hour and 39 minutes.

Terry said: “Last year was a mix of running and walking so this year my goal was to run the whole way which, thank God, I managed ... I chose to run for CAFOD again as its vision for ‘just one world’ is one that fits so well with the meaning of ‘catholic’ as ‘universal’ and a motto that governs so much of my life”.

BERLIN : Major No 3 CHICAGO : Major No 4 : Major No 5

FUNDRAISING

Virgin London Marathon - Sunday 26th April If you have your own place, perhaps you’d like to raise money for CAFOD

Brighton Marathon - Sunday 12th April http://www.cafod.org.uk/Fundraise/Sponsored-events/Brighton

Harlow Abseil - Saturday 2nd / Sunday 3rd May

Register your interest with the office now!

Pedal Against Poverty - Sunday 7th June (more details to follow)

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One World Week, Ilford

Ilford South MP, Mike Gapes, was guest speaker at the event held at Vine Church. The theme of the evening was Climate Change and Mike explained the Labour party’s position on climate and development. There was an international meal provided and a sing song afterwards!

Christmas came early for three kings at the Nativity Fun Run

Three kings from Loughton joined angels, shepherds and donkeys at the weekend in a Nativity Fun Run for CAFOD. They were raising money for mothers and babies over 5,000 miles away in El Salvador.

Tom Jarvis (18), Eoin Coughlan (12), and Nathan Howes (11) from the 7th Epping Forest Scout Group, affiliated to St Edmunds parish, Loughton, took part in the annual CAFOD Nativity Fun Run on Clapham Common. Eoin and Nathan also achieved their Scout fitness badges by taking part.

Eoin was one of the first under 16s to cross the finish line of the five kilometre course. He said: “It was my first Nativity Run. I chose to run it for my Scouts fitness badge and have been training on Wednesdays with a running group. The race was fun; it was good to see everyone’s outfits.”

Tom, one of the Scout group’s leaders, hit the headlines as the youngest runner in the London Marathon earlier this year, raising £6,000 for CAFOD.

More than 200 runners took part in the annual race. All the money raised is going to ensure the safe arrival and continued health of babies and their mothers in remote communities in El Salvador.

Catenian president’s charity

Thank you to the Southend Catenian Circle and to Paul Abbott for raising money for CAFOD during his year as circle President.

Paul is pictured here (right) with Treasurer Peter Robinson presenting a cheque for £775 to Joint Diocesan Manager Joanna Jarvis.

FUNDRAISING / NEWS 12

Intercessions, prayers, and an outline service are all available on the website http://www.cafod.org.uk/Media/Files/Resources/Prayer/Resource-pages/Ebola-prayers

EBOLA appeal exceeds £1.4m Parishes, schools and individuals across England and Wales have responded with huge compassion to our Ebola appeal, donating more than £1.4m to help stop the spread of the virus across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Brentwood Diocese has so far donated nearly £45,000.

Your support is helping our Church partners to educate people about the risks, to provide essential hygiene kits and washing-stations, and to ensure burials are carried out safely. Thanks to you, we will reach more than 200,000 people over the coming weeks.

Christian Modino, Head of Emergency Programmes for Africa, said: “It’s important to keep repeating messages about how to prevent the spread of Ebola, and it’s important to do it sensitively. Some customs that people in West Africa consider normal – like shaking hands when you greet a friend or touching the body as part of funeral services – can greatly increase the risk of the virus being transmitted.

“One legacy of civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone is that people do not always trust information provided by governments. Faith leaders have an absolutely crucial role to play in explaining how to control the disease.”

Donate to the Ebola crisis appeal at:

www.cafod.org.uk/Give

For months, people doubted the existence of the Ebola virus, attributing symptoms to other illnesses or even to witchcraft. Our partners are reaching out to community leaders, parish volunteers, schoolteachers and more, teaching them how the virus is spread so they can teach others.

Neil Casey, Head of our Humanitarian team, said: “Some of our staff and partners have themselves lost family

members to Ebola, but, even in difficult circumstances, they’re working around the clock to try to stop the spread.”

CRISIS APPEAL 13

CAMPAIGNS 14

There have been a couple of events since our last newsletter.

2,600+ events in 154 countries, over 500,000 people worldwide—40,000 of them in London. 1 amazing day.

Ahead of a crucial meeting of world leaders in New York, people around the world came together to call for leadership and commitment to act on climate change. After an inter-faith prayer meeting, CAFOD supporters joined the London march. It was an amazing day, walking alongside many diverse groups and those of us at the front of the march managed to hear from some great speakers.

Speaking at the meeting of world leaders, the Prime Minister spotlighted the need to support the poorest communities who are worst hit by climate change, saying it was a threat not just to the environment but also to poverty eradication and to economic prosperity.

Robbie with Mum,

Michaela, Wanstead

Stuart (above) from Newbury

Park & (right) Davi and Mauricio, CAFOD partners from Brazil

In October, the London launch of the One Climate One World took place, with supporters from several Dioceses in the South East coming together to hear from speakers and attend various workshops, including Becoming a Live-simply parish, engaging young people in Climate Change and the Theology of Climate Change. We

heard from CAFOD

partners Jesy and Adan from Peru, who told us about the impact of climate change on the communities with whom they work.

PARISH ACTION FOR 2015: We will hold a ‘Walk to church/share a lift Sunday’

Walsingham House team

Patricia and Pauline from

South Woodham Ferrers

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During November, the month of remembrance, we take time to pray for those who have died and give thanks for loved ones who have made a deep and lasting impression on our lives.

In celebration of our inspiring friends, and as a small token of our appreciation for their years of kindness and dedication, CAFOD Brentwood held its first memorial Mass at Most Holy Redeemer parish, Billericay on Tuesday, November 25 celebrated by Fr John McGrath.

Over the years, CAFOD has been blessed to work alongside the kindest and most committed friends any charity could hope for. The insight, faith and strength of our founders and early supporters still shape our values and way of working today. But one of the saddest aspects of growing older, as individuals and as an organisation, is that some of our closest friends have passed away in recent months and years.

Thank you to those who came along to the Mass, helped with refreshments and also provided names for our Book of Remembrance. Mass is said each Friday for deceased supporters.

Events

Brentwood Diocese CAFOD Mass of Remembrance

Registered Charity No. 285776

Saturday,

24 January

Understanding CAFOD

Amigo Hall, Southwark. Find out more about CAFOD and volunteering

Sunday,

23 February

Tokyo Marathon

6th and final event in Alan Mair’s “Race for Justice” programme

23 February

— 8 March

Fairtrade Fortnight

Friday,

27 February

LENT FAST DAY

Sunday, 7 June Pedal Against Poverty

Lovely 10 or 18 mile ride along the canal and through Lee Valley park. More details to follow.

Joanna Jarvis, Denise Grierson

and Mary Matthews

CAFOD BRENTWOOD Chigwell Convent, 803 Chigwell Road, Woodford Green, Essex IG8 8AU

Tel: 020 8502 9722

E-mail: brentwood@cafod.org.uk

www.facebook.com/cafodbrentwood

Follow @CAFODBrentwood on Twitter

Web: www.cafod.org.uk www.cafod.org.uk/brentwood

Picture credits: CAFOD

Printed on 100%

recycled paper

CONTACT US

To download more prayers or worship materials or to sign up to weekly email reflections, visit www.cafod.org.uk/worship

DIARY

ADVENT PRAYER Wake us up Lord!

God of Salvation, Wake us up Lord! The night is nearly over. Let us begin our Advent journey. Move us from our lives of greed and selfishness, From our globalised world of inequality and exploitation, To your kingdom

of righteousness and mercy. To a transformed world, where peace is built on understanding not weapons, The poor are empowered to live their lives to the full, Businesses are built on need not greed

And your Creation is nurtured not abused. Wake us up Lord! Let us live as people of the light. Amen.

Sue Cooper/CAFOD

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