If you’re already preparing for all the joys of Christmas – thinking about gifts and shopping for turkey and ham for a family feast – you may not be able to imagine Christmas Day without a meal … any meal … to eat.

This is the sad reality for many families on the Zulu Missions. But it’s a reality you can change . . . with your donation towards a Basin of Blessings.

Last year, we asked caring supporters like you to help us fill practical plastic basins with basic food items for families that might otherwise have nothing to eat on Christmas Day. Rice, sugar, cooking oil and canned pilchards aren’t your usual festive fare. But these gifts of food were received with such relief and gratitude!

Already, Mission priests have sent in lists of people in dire need, who are hoping that a Basin of Blessings might be delivered to their humble homes this Christmas.

Your kindness would mean the world to someone like Phumzile – a widow in her 80s who cares for five grandchildren on her pitiful pension and child grant money. All of them often go to bed hungry and wake up hungry.

Or 26-year-old Tholakele, who lives with her sister and three young children. All of them were surviving on her mother’s pension. But the old lady died recently, and now there is no money at all. Tholakele never stops trying to find work … any job, no matter how humble. But there is nothing.

Then there’s Musa, a grandfather, who is living in a church shelter with his son and two grandchildren after their home was completely destroyed in a storm.

The list goes on and on … and we need your help to make sure that nobody gets left out.

It’s said that, ‘Christmas gives people bigger hearts’. And we’re hoping that your heart will be big enough to help us deliver many, many Basins of Blessings to Mission families in need this Christmas.

When your basin is delivered to someone in true and desperate need, you’ll not only be giving the blessing of food at Christmas … but the blessing of your compassionate caring as well. Thank you, and may God bless you.