Thursday 2 September 2010

Birmingham Balti: 'we're all in the same bucket'




A good friend of mine, Colin, ran a Balti evening in Birmingham to raise funds for Pakistan Flood relief. Unfortunately I was unable to attend but it sounded a great event. But I'll let Colin describe it himself ......

It went well.... David said grace in Urdu and prayed for blessing on the restaurant staff and the people affected by the floods - the staff and owner were really touched by the whole thing. We had 36 sat down at table and and a few who donated but couldn't come.
The final result - unless more gifts come in: We all paid £10 per person for our meal and on top of that raised £661.18 [ £554 plus we estimate DEC can expect to receive an estimated gift aid top up of 107.18 ]

It is a version of what I talked about in CMS as balti church - there was an enormous buzz of conversation - so much so, it was hard to be heard reading the poems, cos people did not want to stop talking lol.... (but little formal religious expression) and we had folk from about seven churches as well as some members of my family. We did a little quiz about Pakistan at the beginning ... and the level of that was about right....
Balti church / balti gathering cos in the end we're all in the same bucket!

A great effort if you ask me. If anyone else is inspired to do something similar then maybe you could send funds through CMS to help our response. I've written up some bits about it on this blog. Just click away on the CMS website: Give Now

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