Dinner for Kigezi

‘All good things around us are sent from heaven above…’ The Harvest Festival season has arrived in North Wiltshire and churches are whipping out their harvest hymns and decorating the church with impressive home grown produce; (the pineapples last Sunday at St John the Baptist, Brokenborough perhaps suggesting that not everything is locally grown?) In truth this has been a tough harvest for our farmers so our gratitude to God for His provision has a fair dollop of relief served with it this year.

However, this Harvest at Malmesbury Abbey we are taking a different approach. We are asking you not to bring carrots or turnips, or old bicycles or mobiles as we have done in previous years (when we worked with Bikes4Africa and WaterAid.) This year, on Sunday October 14th, we want your dinner money. Fast for a meal and put the money you save in a Dinner for Kigezi envelope, or simply work out the cost of your family meal, or dinner at The Old Bell, and put the same amount in an envelope marked Dinner for Kigezi. Why?

As part of our diocesan link with the church in Uganda, the Deanery of North Wiltshire (our bit) is linked with the Diocese of Kigezi, based on the city of Kabale near the Rwanda/Ugandan border; I visited there last year (see above.) In the mountainous south west of Uganda access to water and sanitation is limited, and the diocese there has an outstanding project that is improving the general health of children and particularly the lives of girls and women who are no longer having to work daily long distances to fetch water. Alongside this there is an HIV education project running which provides safe water for those living with HIV. Through Tearfund we are becoming a connected church to this project over the next few years, and you can find out more about it at 

http://connected.tearfund.org/en/project_link/choose_a_project/africa/uganda_-_water/

If you put your dinner money in an envelope from the Abbey and fill it in we can reclaim the tax through gift aid. Many thanks.