Union Baptist Church is situated on the A404. There are clues there. At one end the A404 is Regent Street in Central London. It is not a quiet road (though long years ago the cows walked along it to the common land east of the town, hence Easton Street.
No-one ever knows what the future holds but I am confident that at no time in the years leading up to that winter's night did anyone imagine that people would have to be encouraged to leave the cars they had abandoned on the street outside and come into the warmth of the church for their own safety. It happened in 2009.
And so it was that we were asked to open our Church as an Emergency Rest Centre for people stranded by the snowy roads and icy hills. Roads normally busy with traffic had only pedestrians struggling between cars and vans abandoned at the roadside. Read about it here.
And so it was that we were asked to open our Church as an Emergency Rest Centre for people stranded by the snowy roads and icy hills. Roads normally busy with traffic had only pedestrians struggling between cars and vans abandoned at the roadside. Read about it here.
Through to 2:00 am people arrived. Some walked in as though they were arriving for a meeting, some arrived as though they had trekked from the Arctic, one or two looked as though they had been mistakenly delivered by emergency ambulance to us instead of the hospital.
Thirty five people slept for the night at 'Hotel Union'! About 20 others came through the doors and were fortified and warmed for the next stage of their epic journey home. Never has the town or Church witnessed the need to be a Town Centre Snow Shelter before!
God, on the other hand, seemed less surprised and to be working to a nicely visible plan (his plans are often invisible of course).
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