A flower festival held by St Columba’s Parish Church in Portadown has raised £8,000 for worthy causes.
The money will go towards outreach in the local community and the work being supported by the Bible Society in Northern Ireland through a number of projects in Ethiopia.
A cheque for £4,000 was recently presented by the festival organising group to John Doherty of the Bible Society. This money will be used to continue the translation of the first Bible to be ever produced in the Tigrignan language and to make a gift of a large print New Testament to each church in the Tigray province of Ethiopia.
The festival was held in May and was themed on various passages of the Bible and how the Bible came to people in a language they can understand. The flower arrangements were created by people from the parish and they were much appreciated by all the visitors to the church.
In this 400th anniversary year of the publication of the King James Bible, St Columba’s is one of the churches which took part in a special weekend of Bible events that will be based on St Mark’s Parish Church in the centre of Portadown.
It began on Friday morning with a schools programme presented by Scripture Union and a Bible exhibition. On Saturday there was Bible storytelling for children and parents with talks on different aspects of the Bible – its history and how it is being made available today in different non-print formats.
There were special services in St Mark’s on both Sunday morning and Sunday evening.