The Good Friday Act of Witness

The Good Friday Act of Witness in Jubilee Square, Woking, is taking place on a small scale this year, in a covid safe manner. Churches are not encouraged to attend, as only 6 people at a time will be able to gather in the square, but it will be live-streamed and available after the event. The organisers are looking for personal testimonies of God at work during lockdown that can be read out completely anonymously at the event. If anyone has anything that they think might be suitable please get in touch with Sarah Tapp.

Foodbank collection 21 March

There will be a collection for the Foodbank between 12-2 pm - please bring any of the following to the church car park:

Tomato sauce, cartons of juice, tinned salmon, tinned rice pudding, tinned fruit, toilet paper, tinned potatoes, fray bentos meat pies, savoury biscuits, tinned ham, tinned mixed vegetables, pot noodles, tinned spam.

Thank you in advance for your continued support.

Mother's Day treats

As always there will be a treat for all mums on Mothering Sunday 14 March. This will be available at both entrances to church from 11.30am-4pm, while stocks last! Please spread the word.

March prayer diary

Download your copy from here.
You can download a copy of the Diocesan Calendar of Prayer here.

Prayer for the nation

Prayer for the Nation meetings are now on zoom every second Thursday of the month. The coming date is March 11th at 11.30 am for 40 minutes. Please join if you are interested. https://us04web.zoom.us/j/4377450836?pwd=Q1o4b1NaRTZzUE0wZzZRejk2SmlMUT09 Meeting ID: 437 745 0836 Passcode: 468123

Top tip for YouTube services

We are now running our online services on YouTube, which is easier to manage for our tech team and more accessible for people who don't like to use Facebook. Some people have struggled to find the services; if this is the case then it will help you to subscribe to the St Mary of Bethany feed - this will make our content appear more prominently. For one-to-one tech help, email us here.

A Lent journey with Sarah

You are invited to join Sarah Tapp on a 7-week reflective journey reading through our Lent book Hannah Steele's 'Living His Story'. Covering a chapter each week until Maundy Thursday, 1st April. Each week there will be a blog, a video and a zoom call every Thursday at 1pm, for anyone who would like to join and chat over each chapter! You can join the Zoom Meeting. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85448179728?pwd=K3JvV0llWGx6TTBVVDZxekdFWlRjQT09. Meeting ID: 854 4817 9728. Passcode: 140702.

Gazebos Wanted!

Do you have a Gazebo that you would be able to let us borrow for a few weeks? Joel and Kate need to borrow 5 Gazebos for a youth and children's event when we restrictions are eased again. If you have a gazebo that is around 2m x 2m then please let us know and they can be stored at the church from as soon as you can. Please let Joel know via email joel.thomas@stmarybethany.org.uk

Engage Easter Assembly

Joel, our New Wine Discipleship intern, was involved in making this Easter story for Woking schools, with our friends at Engage Woking Schools. Give it a watch! https://youtu.be/FYTF1eQsrHE
Please pray with us that schools will use this familiar Easter story shared in a new way and that it will stir the hearts and minds of all who see it.

Let us pray for you

SMOB is starting a prayer list. We will pray for everyone on the list each Sunday in our intercessions, and during the week in Morning Prayer. You can add someone by first name, full name or just an initial; you don't need to give us any details. We will pray for people for three weeks and then ask whether they need to continue. To add someone to the list, please contact the Church Office.

This week on the blog...

...Mark has posted about 'Some things I've learned about grief' & Sarah has posted about 'Living His Story Ch. 3.' Visit our team's blog here.

Services online only during lockdown

We have decided to suspend in-person worship during lockdown, so our services will be online-only until 21 February at the earliest. Although churches are allowed to keep worshipping in their buildings under government guidance, we need to ensure that everyone feels safe, and at present the new variant of covid and the number of local infections mean we do not feel safe to continue. Our services will continue to be live-streamed and available to everyone. Please do continue to look out for friends who cannot access our online services, and let us know via the Office if we can help.

There will be a live stream of the service at 10.30am every Sunday available on our YouTube page or our website here: https://smob.uk/services.

Let's pray together

We are praying together at 9am Monday-Friday on Zoom. You can join us by following this link.
Here are some instructions on how to download and use Zoom. You don't need a zoom account to join a meeting and you don't have to download the program either.

Shopping online and with Amazon can help SMOB

A huge thank you to everyone who raised donations through easyfundraising and AmazonSmile. It would be so helpful if you could be mindful of the benefit to St Mary's of raising funds in this way, as you start to shop.

We have two ways that you can help SMOB when you shop online which are at no cost to yourself.

1. Easy fundraising. Using a free and easy app, you can collect donations for us every time you shop online at many retailers, with Easy Fundraising. It’s a really easy way to help us raise funds and we’d really appreciate your help so please register to support us at: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/stmaryofbethany/

2. Amazon. You can also help us when shopping through amazon, follow this link to setup SMOB as your amazon smile charity: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1128813-0 then use smile.amazon.co.uk to shop with amazon, if you use their app on your phone you can also setup your smile settings there so all purchases you make on your phone help SMOB, check under "Settings" -> "AmazonSmile" in the app.

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