Robert, Melrose and Ailsa travelled to Swansea on 28th December to deliver the reverse Advent calendars that had been received in any of our drop off points by the 22nd December. Lawrence had also picked up some from peoples homes so that we had 19 to take down with us.  Some were labelled for families and some for children and some were designed to be split up and shared. All were very welcome.

It was strange arriving at Unity in Diversity and not seeing Wayne, David or Margaret who all had other commitments but it was lovely to see Terryl, her daughter, Jonathan, Ben, Maria, Phil and Sunay. For a while, volunteers were the only people there! We looked forward to eating vast amounts of curry but thankfully people started to arrive and we found some games and some tidying to do. We ate mince pies and chatted. Several of the men hadn’t had Christmas presents so we gave out some that remained from the party as well as reverse Advent calendars.

It’s interesting to note that a year ago most of the people attending were men whereas now there are a number of women and children and the soft toys taken down pre Christmas have nearly all been shared around. It was lovely to be able to give a few toys to a little girl only reunited with her dad within the last few weeks and to a small boy who attended for the first time with his mother and grandmother. They have only been in the country for a few months but have already been to stay in 3 other cities. I hope they will enjoy Swansea and be able to settle.

There are still a few presents and advent calendars to share out [ and its not too late to give more] but all who came to the drop in had something and seemed very delighted.

Finally, many months ago we were given a bag of dressing up clothes which we brought down to UID earlier this month and we were able to find costumes that fitted several of the children attending this evening. We had a Santa, a princess from Frozen and Batman running round. It took a while for the English class to settle!