Busy Sunday!

We had such an exciting and packed Sunday yesterday.  We have Bob Chamberlain visiting us from Yorkshire, England and he is doing a series on I Peter through the Bible studies on Fridays and the Sunday meetings.  Anyway let me give you a diary of our Sunday.

The fun started at about 11.30am when all the children started arriving for the children’s club at noon!  The doorbell rang incessantly and the stairs reverberated with little, but noisy, feet as they all made their way from all over the neighbourhood up to the fourth floor.  As they race past our flat which is on the third floor a visitor would be excused for thinking the building was shaking!  At about 10 minutes to 12 the two charity minibuses overflowing with children arrived and children poured out at an alarming pace and also raced up the stairs.  At 12 noon there was a slight hush as the club started with prayer and then a resounding noise as they all started singing their favourite songs.  Occasionally the ceiling shook as they stamped their feet and jumped around when the song involved actions.  One of my favourites is “Peter and John went to pray” – the actions are done with such relish!  Sitting in our room on the third floor we could hear the children singing on the fourth floor and then in more moderate tones the teen’s club singing on the second floor.  After the Bible lesson the children do their crafts whilst the teens enjoy a drink and a snack and chat together for a while.  Finally the minibuses are once again loaded and the children are driven back to their homes.

The clubs finished at about 2pm and the communion service starts at 3pm.  One lady from the church has volunteered to come in every week and she makes the lunch for all the Sunday school teachers and the children’s drivers.  Also there are some children whose families attend the church.  All these people eat together at about 2pm and enjoy some fellowship before the church starts.  The communion service was well attended yesterday and Bob spoke to us for a few minutes.  The local Christians that attend the communion take up a collection which is intended for the support of three sets of missionaries around the world.  The Lord has enabled them to send support to the Philippines, Burma and Thailand.  This last week we had received a mission newsletter from the missionary who the church supports in Thailand and after communion this letter (which Mum had translated) was read out and the photographs (displayed with a projector) excitedly discussed.  It gives the local believers, who themselves are so poor, such a lot of excitement to know that God can use their tithe and offering to further His work somewhere else in the world!

At 4pm the main church service started.  They were able to sing a new song that they have learnt – one of the last songs Dad had translated for them – “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah”.  Bob preached his second sermon from I Peter.

Our very busy day ended with a Question and Answer fellowship session.  Quite a lot of the young folk and other members of the church stayed behind and discussed some interesting questions whilst enjoying coffee and cake!  One of the questions was asked by a young man who has only just started attending and we are not sure exactly how he stands in his relationship with God.  He asked about church attendance “Why do we need to attend church?”  Another question led to a very interesting discussion about the Passover Lamb.  When we finally got back upstairs it was gone 8 pm but we were all praising God for a fruitful and enjoyable Sunday!

Thank you for the wood!

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who reads this blog that has contributed towards the wood.  A dear couple in the UK just purchased the last truck of emergency supplies of fuel and we are grateful to them, as well as to anyone who has contributed to wood throughout this very difficult winter.

On the same day as the wood arrived the men started chopping the logs into manageable pieces and had got them organised for some emergency deliveries the next day.  Meanwhile Mike and I with one member of our team (the others were chopping!) went on visitation.  When we got to the block of flats which we had been given as an address we were on the verge on turning back and returning as we were all sure that we were at the wrong place.  The flats were derelict and looked like they were ready for demolition.  In fact, some parts had already fallen down.  Sadly we were not in the wrong place and almost all the rooms in the place were occupied.

 

The young mum we visited (who was herself in urgent need and has been added to the list of people that we will help on a regular basis, God willing) very generously informed us that she knows of many other families in that very building who are much worse of than herself.  “I have an indoor toilet” she said proudly “although I don’t have any running water and have to carry it in buckets from the end of the hallway”  We spent some time sat talking with her and playing peek-a-boo with her one year old!

 

As we were getting ready to leave the place, all of us feeling very weary, another woman ran towards the van.  She said “Won’t you please visit us also, we are in such a desperate state” and then she started crying.  They lived on the ground floor of this dilapidated place, there was no heating in the place at all and we all felt instantly chilled to the bone.  The walls were running with water.  She had no toilet to speak of really and her washing facilities I have photographed for you to see.   There was no running water - it had to be carried from the opposite building.

The bathroom and laundry room

Her invalid son was in bed and the other daughter was so humiliated that she could barely look up.  I tried to talk to her a bit, at which point she said “I have my own bedroom, would you like to see it?”  Feeling rather pleased that I had broken the ice I followed her and we entered a cupboard!  Whilst I fought the feelings of claustrophobia I decided they would actually have to come back to the charity building with us and receive instant help.  They were finally taken home again with most of the wood that our hard-working men had chopped ready for the next day, food parcels and lots of bedding.  All three of the visitation team came back home with a migraine due to all the emotional tension and I’m still having nightmares about it.  Mum summed it up for me though – she said “At least we know that for the rest of this winter they will sleep in warmed rooms and with wool blankets”

Answering a call for help

We have just had such a wonderful opportunity for witnessing and sharing the gospel in an afternoon of visiting some families who have only just applied to the charity for help.  It was so exciting to enter these incredibly impoverished homes and not only help them with some material help but to give them lots of Christian literature (tracts, calendar and New Testament) and to talk with them about the Lord and His love for them and how He died to save them.

Although the weather has improved a lot there is still a lot of ice on the roads that are not main routes.  We set off in the charity’s van with some boxes of wood and food parcels with the intention of finding a family who had been referred to us as particularly in need of urgent help.  There seems to be no local street map of the area of Yerevan that we were searching, so it was a case of asking every local taxi that we saw “Where is number 31 street?”  A number of times we were sent in the direction we had only just come from and we were on the verge of giving up.  Finally, one taxi driver told us to take the next right turn, which turned out to be a tiny side-street which was literally only just wide enough for our van to pass through.  To add to our driver’s difficulties the ice on the road was hard-pressed and thick!  When we finally found the elusive address getting into the house presented the next difficulty.  The woman we were called to visit, Nellie, was living in a two roomed attic which was above the main section of the house.  She was renting the attic from the landlady at a nominal fee.  The landlady explained to us that she urgently needed the money from this attic’s rental but cannot possibly evict Nellie as that would make Nellie’s family homeless – she is not even managing to afford the current nominal fee.  Nellie has five young children, one of them an invalid and the other only two years old, but sadly her husband, frustrated with his situation and poverty, decided to run away to Russia and has left them to face their fate.  The attic was so damp that every member of the family including Nellie had dreadful chesty coughs and the two year old’s nose was running and had to be persistently wiped with her sock!

I was just trying to assimilate the whole situation and take in what we were seeing and wonder how best to help them when the landlady arrived on the scene.  Nellie had been a bit slow in telling us the urgency of her needs but the landlady was very vocal as to how desperately poor Nellie is and what she thought of Nellie’s situation.  Finally, she calmed down enough to listen to us all and we managed to get some information and instructed Nellie to come to the charity’s building and get some clothes, shoes, etc.  Her 8 year old daughter has not been attending school as she has no appropriate clothing, no school materials and no shoes whatsoever other than flip-flops.  We invited the mother to bring the child to the children’s clubs and to come and get school materials.  In the photograph Nellie is the lady with her eyes shut (she was only 37), the lady in the dressing gown is Nellie’s mother.  The young girl standing behind the baby is the 8 year old daughter.  Photographing them in their home situations sometimes causes some embarrassment so I did not want to repeat the photo despite the shut eyes!

All this time the landlady was listening to what was being said and continually interjecting and telling us that she also was in a very bad way and in urgent need of help also.  I must confess my initial reaction was that to think this woman had just heard how we would help her tenant and was now simply jealous and not particularly needy.  We decided at the end of our visit with Nellie that we must also visit the landlady to find out her situation.  How wrong can impressions be? 

 

 The landlady and her husband (who was dressed in what I can only describe as rags) were living in a home that I am sure it would be illegal to use as an animal shed in England.  Numerous parts of the ceiling were leaking – I mean pouring water!  There was no plaster on wall, floor or anywhere.  There were lots of bowls and buckets all over the cold floor to collect the freely flowing water.  The bare, undecorated, dark and cold room contained 4 beds – for the husband, the wife and two teenage children.  All the bedding was mouldy and smelling atrociously.  The father of the household, who was only 47, looked much older and he also had a chesty cough from all the damp.  Once again we felt overwhelmed in the face of such need and were grateful that we could at least present a food parcel, some warm bedding, some wood etc.  Once again we were able also in this home to present the gospel message and leave them with not only some material help but Christian literature and lots to think about with regard to their souls.

It made a difference to that one!

A couple of photographs for you today!  I mentioned a few blogs ago how Mike and Hovig visited an old man who was sat in his bed for fear of the cold.  When they arrived the inside of his house was absolutely freezing and they had to come back and get a load of wood to take him.  Here is a photo of that dear “granddad” – he makes broom handles for a living (he’s about 80 years old)

In a recent newsletter (I think about 2 newsletters ago) I mentioned Rima.  She lives alone and when we visited her last year she was in such a sorry state.  She cried throughout our entire visit and talked about how alone she was in the world and how hopeless.  We told her the gospel and then promised to send her food parcels and lots of Christian literature.  After we returned to England the visitation team faithfully visited her.  Meanwhile in England a dear Christian sister was touched by the story of Rima and made her a patchwork quilt.  When we returned to Armenia we decided to visit Rima, see how she was doing and give her the quilt.  

What a change!  She had taken hope from the help she was receiving.  She had cleaned her home and tears had been replaced by copious smiles.  She hugged Mike and I so many times.  I asked her how she was coping with the cold winter and she said “With family like you to send me warm woollies and the lovely colourful blankets on my bed, I am coping very well.”  She told us how she has become a Christian and is now praying every day and trusting the Lord to see her through each day however difficult it is.  She said I’m never alone as I talk to the Lord and I know that you are my family and care for me!  We came away with singing refreshed hearts.  What a privilege to have made a difference in someone’s life so that they now feel they are no longer alone in the world.

Once upon a time there was a wise man

who used to go to the ocean

to do his writing.

He had a habit of walking

on the beach

before he began his work.

One day he was walking along

the shore.

As he looked down the beach,

he saw a human

figure moving like a dancer.

He smiled to himself to think

of someone who would

dance to the day.

So he began to walk faster

to catch up.

As he got closer, he saw

that it was a young man

and the young man wasn't dancing,

but instead he was reaching

down to the shore,

picking up something

and very gently throwing it

into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out,

"Good morning! What are you doing?"

The young man paused,

looked up and replied,

"Throwing starfish in the ocean."

"I guess I should have asked,

why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?"

"The sun is up and the tide is going out.

And if I don't throw them in they'll die."

"But, young man, don't you realize that

there are miles and miles of beach

and starfish all along it.

You can't possibly make a difference!"

The young man listened politely.

Then bent down, picked up another starfish

and threw it into the sea,

past the breaking waves and said-

"It made a difference for that one."

A photo of our day!

It is Wednesday morning again and we have just finished the ladies’ meeting.  There was such a wonderful atmosphere in the meeting today.  I gave a small illustrated talk on lessons we can learn from the eagle and Mum spoke on the theme “Do not be weary in well-doing”.  There was a very good turn-out this week – there has been no more snow and the main roads are clear now, although our road is still an ice rink.

It’s a normal working day here in the charity building.  Mike is spending this morning immersed in Armenian Grammar.  His teacher is here and one of them is pulling their hair out (usually, anyway).  The children are occupied with school.  The children’s team are busily preparing crafts and later today they will be going shopping and buying materials ready for when the clubs restart.  Weather permitting we are hoping that the clubs will restart in the first week of March.  The cook is making mashed potatoes for lunch and another lady is cooking a cake to serve church folk.  Several of the ladies are sorting through aid that has been sent – they are looking for suitable sizes to give to a few people who have asked if they can have some clothes.  Two of the visitation team have driven off in the van to go to a village (about half an hour’s drive away) to take wood to someone there that has run out of heating.  The other member of the team is out in the “food” room weighing rice, lentils, sugar into packages and bagging food parcels ready for when the driver gets back and they go visiting.

Our secretary is quietly chipping away at accounts while huddled next to the oil-filled radiator – its cold downstairs.  One of our team, specifically with us for translation work, is working on the translation of some new tracts while Mum is reading through the Major Prophets and proof-reading.  Two ladies are cleaning the church hall, following the ladies meeting this morning, getting it ready for prayer meeting tomorrow morning.  One of the young men is preparing one of the computers that came in the container.  It needs some technical work doing on it, some programs adding and more memory putting in and then it will be given to an invalid child.  She is a genius child of about 10 years old with disfigurements all over her body, including her hands.  Sadly, this means that her studies have been stunted as she cannot write.  We are hoping that the computer will change this situation. 

I think this sums up what everyone is doing!  I am writing this blog, some emails to folks at home and home-schooling.  Hopefully the visitation team will be back soon and after lunch we shall be able to go visiting with them.  I’m not sure who is on our agenda for today.  We were going to visit a 40 year old mum of three who has terminal cancer.  However we heard that she has the doctor’s coming to visit her today so that may have to be post-poned.  We are praying God directs our paths and sends us where He wants us to be.

First camp meeting of the year!

We’ve just finished our half term.  The children are all rested and waiting to start school again but the teacher is not so willing (me!).  I’ve battled with a cold all week and its left me with a bit of a dry cough.  Wish I could have another week’s rest!  I’m hoping my cough improves during the day because I want to teach another one of Dad’s translated hymns at the meeting this evening – “I will sing the wondrous story”.  I think they’ll really enjoy this one as Mike as found some lovely backing music for it too. 

Aside from trying to rest a bit this week we’ve also had our first “formal” and another “informal” meeting with the summer camp leaders and decided on a few preliminary things.  We now have a rough idea of what weeks camp will run, God willing, who will teach what and also some idea of themes and how we are going to decorate rooms.  We are going to need lots of craft materials bringing from England, which I’m quite excited about – I love going shopping!  Ruth has very kindly volunteered to write the lessons which will be taught in our camps and send them to us.  She is also going to produce the morning booklets we use for teaching the children about prayer.  Due to Ruth’s going we were short on one teacher for morning prayer groups but one of the other team workers has already volunteered to fill that spot!  I love working with these people and pray that God gives them the health, strength, ability and courage to do all that they want to do for Him!  It was rather weird having a meeting about summer camps whilst in our woollens and huddled round the electric heater.

This last week we’ve also handed out almost all the 2 truck loads of wood that were delivered about a week ago.  Now Mike is wondering whether we will need to buy yet another load.  I mentioned in my last blog that we got a plea for help from a family who had run out of wood.  Whilst in that area of town (which is very difficult to drive to in icy conditions) Mike and Hovig decided to pop in to visit one of the elderly men we give food parcels to, to see how he was faring.  He is about 80 years old and lives alone as his sister recently died.  They found him in bed – he had obviously not got out of bed for a while.  The house was freezing cold.  Unfortunately they had delivered all the wood in the van so they had to come back and return the next day again to that area of town with yet more wood.  The needs this year are overwhelming and Mum correctly summed it up last night when she said “At this stage the important thing is to prevent people from freezing to death.  Wood has become more important than food” – that says it all.

Ladies meeting

We’ve just come out of the ladies meeting.  Once again Mum and I have been amazed at the turnout.  Although no fresh snow has fallen for a few days, the present snow has frozen solid and our entire street resembles a skating rink.  This morning’s meeting was a particularly lovely, and blessed meeting.  Mum continued her series today on “Spiritual depression” – today’s lesson being an exhortation for us to look at God and keep our eyes focussed on Him, His goodness and power and not the waves and storms in our lives.  One lady sang a beautiful song for us about God’s mysterious ways of working and I gave a small talk on lessons that we can learn from a honeybee!

The general rule is that we do not give out monetary or material help following a meeting.  The idea is to draw a clear distinction between church and charity.  However the rule had to be laid aside today when we discovered that one of the families (the wife of whom was at the meeting) was sat in the cold at home.  They come from a cold part of town and their house is generally cold even when the log burner is on.  I can’t imagine how cold it is without.  Their wood has run out and no one will take wood to their part of town for them as the roads are too slippery.  One of our main workers is ill today, so Mike and another driver will attempt to get wood to this family’s home later today.  Pray for safety.