Time just seems to fly by. I’ve not been as diligent as I should be about keeping the blog up to date. We have a lot of interesting things brewing over here in Bo’ness. Apart from all the re-structuring, we are also making plans for a brand new contemporary worship service to be called SANCTUARY FIRST.

Its all about putting worship back in first place in our lives. SANCTUARY FIRST seeks to help us do this by committing to a monthly multimedia worship service that explores the purpose and benefits of a variety of worship formats ranging from contemporary to ancient aspects of worship.. There will very shortly be a new web page and also weekly podcasts exploring the themes that are tackled at the SANCTUARY FIRST services. we hope that this will eventually offer daily devotions. It is our desire that SANCTUARY FIRST will go on the road and be a blessing to a wider range of people.

On Friday last Willie McPherson and myself were invited to the Bo’ness Town Hall for a Civic Reception held in honour of the work of Vine Trust and our Branches Shop. Both Willie and I were quite surprised to discover that we were to be presented with medals from the Council in recognition of the work that has been carried out over the past 21 years and especially the work that has been developed in Peru over the last five or six years. It was a wonderful gesture by he Council to recognise the work of the Trust in this way. Below is a picture of the Falkirk Council’s Heroes Medal. In many ways for me the real heroes are the ladies who go down to work in the shop week in week out. Some of them have been doing their shift from the day the shop opened in 1985. Branches gave the first £10,000 to help purchase the first Amazon Hope. Once again Branches is exploring some new and exciting methods of fund raising. We have just commissioned a Scottish designer to work with some of Peruvian artisans to design a collection of original jewelery representing the areas of Peru that the Vine Trust have built homes. We hope that Branches will go on line as a business soon and this jewelery will be available before Christmas.