Jesus’ hands reach out into Harehills.

At 7am it’s a chilly wet autumn morning on Harehills Lane in Leeds but there is a beacon of warmth and light shining out into the damp street. It’s from the Meeting Point Café where anyone can go and get a good warm meal, a cheap cup of tea and a chat until noon. However, this is not just a place for refreshment and a friendly word, but also a place where you can go and write out a prayer in confidentiality to be read in church next Sunday or even speak with Christian Counsellor and Diaconal Student, Vicky Atkins.

Pauline Burrow has been running the café for the past 12 years using only everyday household kitchen equipment (see left) and supported by donations and gifts from the 12 churches in the Richmond Hill Circuit and local schools. She has a stalwart body of volunteers who help out including Nikki, Stella, Joan, Peggy, Vikki, Ann, Pam, Brenda, Freda, Hilda, Jean and Olive who is 85 years old

On average, there are 60-80 people each week step through the door and the prayer requests have been flooding in from the needy in the area. Vicky has been a great asset too for those desperate to talk privately on deeper matters and there are not many churches that have that many people step through their doors every week.

Disaster struck! There was a raging fire which started in the paper shop next door in March 2007. It damaged a lot of the Café and the flat upstairs which provides much needed rental income. Also, the basic kitchen was becoming unable to cope with 16 years of constant usage.

 Wonderfully, the insurance money provided the shop and flat with a new ceiling, new floors and a full redecoration. Alan Parker, the Circuit Treasurer campaigned tirelessly for the money to provide a new commercial kitchen (see below) and Paul Metcalfe from the Horsforth Circuit installed it over a two week period. Pauline is thrilled as it includes a fantastic new Cougar Range complete with a much needed griddle and bain-marie. More good news comes from Chapel Allerton Methodist Church who has made the Café their Charity of the Year which will be an enormous help.