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Special Christmas Offering
Dear Members and Friends of First Congregational Church:Lights and carols and warmth and gifts!
Hello from your Outreach team! Each Advent, we come together as a congregation to designate a special Christmas offering to folks who need lights and carols and warmth and gifts. In this season of blessings, it is part of our celebration of God’s gift of Jesus in Bethlehem to recognize and provide together for the stranger in our midst who also needs shelter.
We are excited that this year’s Christmas offering will go to an organization who really needs us to stand with them at this time. Hope for the Children of Haiti (hhfchaiti.org) is a nonprofit founded here in Boston and with deep roots and leadership involvement from people in Winchester. HCH runs an orphanage and a school for children, serving a country ranked near the very bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index of nations at 163. Half the country is in deep poverty, living on about $5 a day. Supporting Haiti’s children with a home and quality schooling directly addresses poverty at its core.
In early September, HCH was forced to evacuate their home of 27 years and flee for safety from direct threats of violence and harm to the children and staff by the gangs in Port-au-Prince. They are renting space now and raising funds for a new and safer facility to serve children. They estimate needing to raise $3M and have set a goal of raising $250,000 towards that in this Christmas season. Please join us with a generous Christmas donation to HCH. You can use the enclosed envelope in the mailing to your home, or simply note: “Christmas Offering” in the memo line of a check or Venmo payment to the church.
And so we invite you this season, when we remember Jesus came without a place to lay his head, to join us and give generously to this work of building a new children’s home and school, helping to provide love, security, and a future for the children of Haiti. May we together shine God’s light and love in our hearts, our homes, our community, and alongside the children of Haiti.
Your Outreach Committee: Laura Bailey, Don Dutton, Sarah Girotti,
Julia Daggett, Betsy Goodell, Virginia Seay, and Maeve Hammond
