Stories from Belarus

Jane at St Francis Church

OCC volunteers Steve and Ellie Shurville and Jane Turner ventured through the new Hindhead tunnel to attend a shoebox service at St Francis Community Church in Headley Down where they received a very warm welcome. This was a joyful time of fellowship and worship with the theme of the story of the Good Samaritan and the nature of blessings running through the service.
Pictures of Central Asia were shown at the start of the service to illustrate where this year's boxes were going. The Love in a Box video was shown and was followed by Jane's illustrated presentation of her
distribution trip to Belarus in 2010.

Her tales of the living conditions there and her pictures and recollections of handing out boxes to individual children living in difficult circumstances moved some of the listeners to tears. Humour was also not forgotten as Jane mentioned delivering some boxes by horse drawn sleigh and falling off it! Jane made it clear that, for her, the greatest blessing was to be able to hand over boxes to the children in person and to watch the joy in their faces as they discovered the treasures within. The fellowship at St Francis once again showed their commitment to blessing many children via OCC by providing 61 lovingly filled shoeboxes.