Call Campaign: Angie's Story
God loves it when you ‘share your food with the hungry’, ‘when you see the naked, to clothe them’.
In the deprived Shepway area in Maidstone, Vine Church runs Oasis Café, a community café, a food bank and an outlet for secondhand clothing.
Manager of the operation is Angie Crowe, who leads a team of 30 volunteers. ‘There’s not a lot of community stuff in Shepway’, she says. ‘We get all sorts of people through the door; lots of people that society wouldn’t love and cherish’.
An Oasis in Maidstone
One lady told her: ‘I didn’t know what love was like until I came into this place’.
It’s not just food they provide; they provide clothing, act as advocates, help people to get medical appointments and help people fill in forms and doing things on line; not everyone that comes in can read or write. And praying for people is just natural; ‘90% of people say yes if we ask them, “can we pray?”’.
Angie is adamant you don’t have to be a special sort of person to help:
‘I can speak, read and write; that’s pretty well all you need if you’ve got God’s Spirit. Just sitting down with people, having a cup of tea and listening to them, loving them, can make such a massive difference to their lives’.
If you have a story of God at work in your church, neighbourhood or workplace we would love to hear it! Email us at magazine@relationalmission.com