The editor of Anglican Taonga, the news service of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, Julanne Clarke-Morris, found a land divided, but a community and its churches united, when she toured the earthquake-hit region of southern Marlborough.

[Anglican Taonga, by Julanne Clarke-Morris] Today the first of 300 Christmas hampers will go out to earthquake-shaken families across southern Marlborough, with labels that read: “With love from the New Zealand churches.” The hampers are an idea of Seddon-based vicar the Revd Dawn Daunauda and lay leaders from her quake-harried parish, the Awatere Christian Joint Venture (CJV). Over the next ten days the Awatere CJV team will deliver the hampers to households between Ward and Clarence townships, and fly others up the Awatere Valley, where roads are blocked off by slips.

The Awatere CJV serves small towns and rural districts south of Blenheim and north of Kaikoura, taking in Seddon, Ward and the nearby Awatere Valley. That location puts them alongside the Hurunui-Kaikoura 7.8 magnitude earthquakes’ main faults, which ripped open across the district at 12.02 am on 14 November 2016 [NZDT, 11.02am, Sunday 13 November, GMT].

• Read Julanne Clarke-Morris’s full in-depth report on the Anglican Taonga website.