Happy New Year to everyone in our villages! Wishing you health and 

happiness in 2021 when hopefully life will get closer to resembling what we think of as ‘normality’. We’re still in Advent as I write this and we are indeed still ‘waiting in hope’ for a better future while so many people in our commu-nity continue to be very challenged by COVID19 and its fall out. 

The end of December brought some good news with two additional grants secured and pledged totalling £20,000 awarded to the Restoration & Re-newal Campaign. Thanks to one of the grants for £7,000 from Burghley House Preservation Trust, we hope it won’t be long until the churchyard paths can be re-layed giving improved access by connecting the gates to the mobility-friendly north porch entrance to the church. These new grants bring our total campaign funds secured/pledged to just over £104,000, leav-ing a shortfall of £25,000 to cover the costs of roof replacement. 

We are very grateful to Debbie Rolfe for organising a Senior’s Christmas Get Together fundraiser at The Green Dragon, helped by several volun-teers. Thanks to everyone who came along to enjoy a lovely lunch while raising funds for a good cause. 

Betty Edwards has already raised over £2,700 with her ‘Capt. Tom’ style fundraiser walk for St. John’s Church roof! Her huge effort has been recog-nised by recent interviews with the Persani Podcast, The Stamford Mercury and The Village Diary as well as a special feature on BBC1’s East Midlands News (links are on the church Facebook page). If you’d like to support Bet-ty’s efforts, donations can be made via her GoFundMe page at https://gf.me/u/y5g5qn. Thanks Betty and also to your granddaughter Jordane who works as your support team for the project. 

If you have any good fund-raising ideas, please share them, or even better, get involved! Keep up to date with all our news on the St. John’s Church 

Ryhall Facebook page. 

Thank you to all those who have supported fundraising activities or sent donations to save our church. If you would still like to, then please go to our GoFundMe page at https://www.gofundme.com/manage/church-restoration-campaign or send a donation to revjosaunders@live.co.uk. We are very grateful for your support.