happy yorkshire day!

Tomorrow is Yorkshire Day and the Sanctuary is almost ready to help Ilkley give thanks for God’s own county… For weeks now we’ve been busy making plans and preparing goodie bags to give out to hundreds of Ilkley-ites tomorrow – and it’s been a real labour of love.

GBY window final

Tonight a few of us are meeting to pray for Yorkshire – there will be plenty of celebration but we’ll also be chatting about some difficult things we believe break God’s heart – as well as ours. And we’ll be praying blessing on every village, town, valley and city in our region.

Then tomorrow morning the balloons will go up, and we’ll be giving out gift bags to passers-by and people around Ilkley’s town centre… these bags contain gifts (a unique celebration postcard and badge) that feature the art work on display in our Yorkshire Window. (Pictures of gifts below.)

This amazing, giant painting (see above) is the Sanctuary’s moveable mural and is usually to be found on our prayer room’s back wall, rather than in our window. It was painted as a gift for our centre by Ilkley based artist, Alison Hodson and inspires us with a reminder of Ilkley Moor’s beauty every day – so what better visual to use as the inspiration for all our gifts on this special day of celebration?!

On the back of the postcard we’ve started a list of all the wonderful things we want to celebrate about God’s own county… but of course we couldn’t even squeeze half of Yorkshire’s brilliant people and places into an A6 space, so we’re hoping passers by will be able to help us…

We’ll have glass paints with us tomorrow morning and everyone is invited to come and write what they want to give thanks for onto our celebration window.

We hope you’ll come to 6 Church Street tomorrow…  We’d love to see what you’d choose to write on our window as the thing you want to celebrate about Yorskhire. And we’d be really happy to put a gift bag into your hands.

Thank you – you are part of what makes us thankful to live in God’s own county! God bless you.

And now, here are those pics we promised you…

Gift bag:

GBY gift bag image

 

Postcard – front and back

GBY postcard front

GBY postcard back

Badge: (scarf model’s own!)

GBY badge worn
Behind the window… baskets of 250 goodie bags waiting to be given out tomorrow:

GBY basket close up   GBY behind the mural

PS A very big thank you to:

Alison Hodson for freely giving her beautiful painting not just to the Sanctuary but to the whole of Ilkley and beyond. And also thanks to her husband Nic, who has helped us hang it.

– Claire of Pear Tree Flowers, Ilkley for growing and giving such beautiful flowers to bridge the gap between art and life.

– The Sanctuary’s amazing team of pray-ers and volunteers who’ve been so generous with their time and skills to design gifts, write copy, guillotine tags, fill bags, twist white roses, pray, man the interactive window tomorrow and of course – give out the gifts that are currently patently waiting at the foot of the mural.

– Everyone who’s given so generously to the Sanctuary so we can afford to share our celebration with people in Ilkley.

– Awesome Merchandise, Leeds who provided such a brilliant production service.

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