The St John’s Scottish Episcopal Church, Newall Terrace , Dumfries’ congregation have again rose to the occasion magnificently with a ‘wonderful’ response to this year’s Blythswood Care shoe box appeal.
On Thursday, drivers from the UK charity Blythswood Care collected the 43 boxes – the same as last year – donated by kind members of the St John’s congregation – and their friends who are not church-goers.
The boxes have been filled with all sorts of Christmas goodies as well as everyday practical items that will be distributed across parts of Europe and India to those in desperate need, whether they are children up to 16 or vulnerable adults.
‘Our response was just wonderful,’ said church secretary Carol Finlay, who co-ordinated the collections from the church office on Newall Terrace.
‘These gifts are a sign of the generosity and Christian love of our congregation and their friends in that they want to help put a smile on the faces of people who have very little, hundreds and thousands of miles away at Christmas.’
Carol said that a fun quiz in the church hall on the 30 October plus individual and online donations had raised £493 – cash that will be used by Blythswood to help meet the transportation costs in delivering all the shoe boxes in the run up to Christmas.
Last winter Blythswood’s appeal resulted in 106,000 shoe boxes being delivered to people in eight east European countries and in Pakistan. The charity has distributed almost 2 million shoe boxes in the 22 years it has run the appeal.
