Each month we pray for two of our mission partners. During December we are praying for The Hospice of St Francis and Embrace the Middle East.
The Hospice of St Francis is a charity that helps over 2000 local people and their families by providing free care enabling to live their lives well. Please pray for:
- the team of paid staff and volunteers
- for all those served by the hospice at this time – especially in the run up to Christmas
- for the fundraising events that are happening and planned, that they would be successful in providing funds to support this valuable work
Embrace the Middle East provides help and support to marginalised and vulnerable people in the Middle East. They provide support where there is injustice poverty and little or no medical care. They provide doctors and travelling medical units to remote communities as well as a nurse training school. They work with disadvantaged children and those with disabilities providing both educational and recreational activities. Families with disabled children are supported and encouraged as these children are frequently neglected. They have worked in the refugee camps both those new from recent conflicts and those that have been there for decades. Rowena Worthington, EME’s Church Relationships Manager, who launched Gift Day for us last year has sent us these three items for prayer, focused upon the conflict in Gaza:
- for the bereaved, and for those whose lives have been lost
- that the killing will stop, that a permanent ceasefire across the whole of the Gaza strip will be brokered, and that humanitarian aid will reach the hundreds of thousands of innocent women, children and men whose lives are in great danger
- for peace, reconciliation and justice for all Palestinians & Israelis
Embrace’s contact with their friends in Gaza is limited as they don’t always have a connection, but they have been updating their website with any news they do have here: https://embraceme.org/embrace-iopt-partner-updates. On that same page, you can join prayer vigils with their partners on 3 consecutive Monday evenings in December. These are at 7pm & started on Monday (4th); you can sign up for these which are linked to their Advent reflections.
In addition to our Gift Day donation, Sunnyside is once again giving the offertory at our Carol Service, Midnight Communion and Christmas day service to Embrace, whose office is in Amersham (but will move to High Wycombe in 2024), praying that these will be particularly generous ones this year.