We Love Folkestone: FREE CANDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Saturday a bunch of us from various youth groups in Folkestone got together to hand out free loveheart sweets in town centre in the build up for Valentine's Day just to show a bit of love. 

We got together before we went out and had a time of worship and prayer, preparing for what we going to do. We stuck various Scripture verses to each packet of sweets with messages of God's love and compassion to bless every person we gave the sweets to. 

"Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged,
for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I
will hold you up with my victorious right hand." - Is. 41:10

It was a bit scary I've gotta say. As we got ready to go out I was really psyching myself up and thinking, "Aw yeah, it's gonna be great! Gon' give people some sweets, some lurve!" But when it came to it I found myself meandering around town with a bunch of youth looking awkwardly at people and wondering, "Do they even want these sweets? Do they even like loveheart sweets?". 

After a bit of wondering around and overcoming some nervous giggles, we started giving the sweets out to people we passed in the street. Some people turned us down but the majority took the sweets.

I approached an elderly lady in the street asking if she'd like some free loveheart sweets and she very happily took them saying that they were her favourite. I offered her some more but she declined saying, "I shouldn't - I'm diabetic!". She also said how she was feeling really low that day and, by the look on her face, I could see that the sweets seemed to really cheer her up. I was very touched by that meeting. 

Simeon, a guy in our group, gave some sweets to a mother who was walking along with her child. She let us give her and her daughter some lovehearts and they were so grateful that the little girl gave Simeon a hug round the legs. It was so cute! The mother said to us before walking on that we had really made her day. 

At the bottom of town we have a butcher who sells meat from a one of those kiosk-vans every Thursday and Saturday and I decided to go up to him and give him some sweets. He looked at me at me funny and said "no, thank you" but his mate standing nearby said he'd have them. As I walked away the butcher cried after me, "'Ey! I want some too!". So we gave him some and would you believe it, he started reading the verse attached to sweets, Philippians 4:7, out loud through his microphone right in the middle of town.

 

There are so many other stories from that Saturday afternoon that I can't write them all down now. But these two things struck me as we handed those sweets out:

1. What we were doing was very unusual. We weren't trying to get anything from anyone, we just wanted to give - a very alien attitude in this world. 
2. What we were doing was really simple. We weren't doing anything particularly fancy. We were just strolling round town giving people a favourite sweet. We didn't get a stage up in town and hand out tracts or give away masses of free stuff. All we did was give something that would hopefully put a smile on people's faces and make them feel special. 

We didn't invite anyone to Church or particularly talk to them about Jesus. We just said that we were from a local youth club and wanted to show some love. However, about 250 people in Folkestone have now read a piece of the Bible and I find that to be very significant. If anything I hope that what we did on Saturday, and the things that WLF are going to do, will be a "link in the chain", as my grandparents say, to people experiencing God's love and salvation for themselves. 

WLF selfie!