Last Saturday we hosted a very successful Ladies Breakfast at St John's Seven Kings with fifty women enjoying a continental breakfast together and the opportunity to hear Lydia Gladwin speak about MUDPIES. This is the acronym for Chelmsford Mothers' Union & Diocese Prison Initiatives, a project which operates in the two prisons in the diocese - Bullwood Hall (184 prisoners) and Chelmsford, a Category B local prison and young offender institution (575).
In her talk, entitled 'Who serves the sentence?' Lydia Gladwin said:
"The needs which the project seeks to meet are a welcome to families and provision for children in the visits' halls. Before we launched MUDPIES there was little provision in the visits' halls, no toys and no play areas.
Progress to date has seen the setting up of a designated play area in Chelmsford prison which has been stocked with toys and equipment given by churches at Christmas. At Bullwood Hall, MUDPIES provides a welcome facility for families in a room outside the main gate where tea and coffee is served to visitors who have often travelled considerable distances. Sometimes we are able to share their anxieties about their situation and its effect on their family life.
At both Chelmsford and Bullwood Hall, volunteers are able to give a practical demonstration of the Christian values of family life by supporting families in such stressful environments. And it is vitally important too that we are able to help children to enjoy visiting their fathers in the prison setting."
During the morning, a cheque for £300 was presented to Lydia for the work of MUDPIES by the Mothers' Union at St John's. This money had been raised through a series of summer tea afternoons and a secondhand book stall in the Church lounge.
This Saturday, it was the turn of the men (see above photos) who enjoyed a cooked breakfast and who heard from Premier Radio presenter John Pantry. John spoke about his work in the music business as an engineer, producer and musician, his conversion to Christianity, and his work as a presenter of Premier Radio.
He emphasised the way in which he and his family had been supported by God especially through times of difficulty and also talked about the value of places in the media, like Premier Radio and its online TV service, where a real breadth of expressions of Christian faith could be heard and seen. For example, Premier's Lifeline helpline takes at least 1,000 phonecalls each week by providing people at the end of a phone able to listen to and support callers.
It has been great to welcome such interesting speakers to these breakfast events at St John's. We have been encouraged to have such a good response from people locally to these events which provide good food and conversation combined with stimulating presentations. What is most interesting is hearing our speaker's stories of how Christian faith engages with real life, on these occasions in the very different worlds of prisons and the entertainment industry.
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