Amy Carmichael encouragement

Before the winds that blow do cease,
Teach me to dwell within Thy calm;
Before the pain has passed in peace,
Give me, my God, to sing a psalm,
Let me not lose the chance to prove
The fulness of enabling love,
O Love of God, do this for me;
Maintain a constant victory.

Before I leave the desert land
For meadows of immortal flowers,
Lead me where streams at Thy command
Flow by the borders of the hours,
That when the thirsty come, I may
Show them the fountains in the way.
O Love of God, do this for me;
Maintain a constant victory.

Proofreading

Nothing to it - right?  You just sit down with a nice cup of tea by your side, get your red pen and add in full stops, correct spelling errors and put in the odd comma! 

Mum is busy proof reading at the moment.  It sounds like she's finished and there's just a few hours to when she can submit the document.  That is until you realise what she's proofreading - the entire Old Testament.  It has, of course, been proof read several times already.  It is now in the process of being prepared to printing and after is has been handled by the typesetter, it must be proof read once again.

I don't know about you but I congratulate myself if I get through reading the Bible in one year.  Mum's already read from Genesis to somewhere in the middle of Kings and its only the 16th of January!!

Piles of paper!

I have been lost in the land of paperwork!  I must confess that I do enjoy the paperwork side of Armenian Ministries.  I guess that's a side we don't ever tell anyone about much - mainly because everyone is interested in the results but not in how they are achieved.
This year I am particularly proud of myself as I finished the 2011 accounts on the 2nd January (aside from the bits and pieces and photocopying etc).  Michael's been working on a new database for me too which means that when I go to Armenia I shall, God willing, no longer have to remember to take with me important paperwork, files etc – it will follow me mysteriously and be waiting for me there (please don’t ask me how!)  I am promising myself that in 2012 I am going to correspond a lot more with our friends and supporters – so be expecting a phonecall, visit or letter – or you can beat me to it if you like!  
Unfortunately the job of paperwork also involves filing.  I do not like filing!  You should see the way Dad set up the charity’s filing cabinets – all perfect, straight and in order.  I like to think he would be proud of how I’ve maintained them but this involves a lot of boring, back-breaking work.  Dad trained me when I was only about 13 to help him with accounting and filing (it was the paperwork of the farm’s accounts at that time!) and boy, am I glad he trained me!  Now I think its time I trained Abigail and I think I’ll start with the filing…..

Happy New Year!

How good is the God we adore,
Our faithful, unchangeable Friend.
Whose love is as great as His power,
And knows neither measure nor end.

Tis Jesus, the First and the Last
Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home
We'll praise Him for all that is past
And trust Him for all that's to come.

Happy New Year to you all.  May 2012 be a blessed year for all of us. 

Some warmth to give

As I sit at my desk working on the yearly accounts for the charity I am listening in to the conversation between Michael and our local director in Yerevan on skype.  Gevork is updating Michael about the needs of the last few days; the people that have come and asked for help and so on.  I, as usual, am sat with tears in my eyes.
Gevork’s last statement was “Michael, I wonder if we could order another truck of wood to distribute.  I know its very expensive but I have had to give a lot of wood to some people who are not regularly helped by us (he sounded apologetic at this stage).  For example, a lady who we don’t normally help came to the charity building and asked for some warm clothing and bedding.  When we asked her about her situation she said she has three small children at home and they are all feeling very cold – they have NO heating in the house at all.  I felt too bad to send her away – I know we normally visit and assess people’s situations before we give them wood and food but I couldn’t bear the thought of three small children sitting feeling cold in this harsh winter”
No, we couldn’t bear that thought either.  Thanks to some extra donations that we’ve been sent due to people responding to these blogs we have ordered TWO truck loads of wood.  Praise God!

Reality check

I'm struggling to blog - I'm sorry.  The reason I'm struggling is because I can't cope with what I'm hearing and having to deal with in Armenia over the last week and Christmas festivities here.  I feel like a hypocrite.  On the one hand I'm wrapping presents - smelly soaps, sweets and candies for stockings, books; buying turkey and bacon and sausages - and within the same hour I'm hearing about a woman who is living with her mentally ill son and has absolutely NO heating in her house right now.

How can you live with no heating?  I spent some time crying about that one.  She is a tiny little old lady (short even for Armenian standards!), has a lovely sweet character, lives alone with her mentally ill son who spends his whole day in bed and they can only just afford to pay for their food with her pension.  The charity workers went earlier this week to deliver her her month's food parcel and discovered her sat there with her son and NO heating on at all.  She not only didn't have any heating on she had no method for heating her house.  We cannot give her wood as she has nowhere to burn it.

So Gevork suggested we buy them an electric heater.  "Yes definitely" - was the answer "Go and get one straight away" but does she have the money to pay for electricity.  "Well probably not, we'll have to pay for that too but we shouldn't give her too much as there are too many others in the same situation" - was Gevork's answer.

I don't know if thats had the effect on you that its had on me but at least lets promise ourselves one thing.  Let's stop fretting about whether everything is magazine-perfect for Christmas and lets start being grateful for our bed which is warm, our clothes, the heating and food to eat.  We owe it to ourselves to be honest and see our blessings.

I'm n..n...not c..c...c...c...cold!

Winter has come to England too and our team of volunteers who sort the clothes and goods, here in Lincolnshire, that are going to go to Armenia in the next container have finally gone home.  Its already dark and cold but they didn’t leave too long ago.  I don’t get much time to get involved in the packing of the container goods but I love going outside sometimes to see what has been packed and I love looking through the lovely neat boxes – all neatly labeled with their contents and their country of origin.  Our patient volunteers not only have to categorise all the clothes eg. Teen’s clothing, but they have to separate them according to whether they originate in India, China or Spain! 

I ventured outside recently to see what sort of things have been packed.  The most enormous orange teddy bear (it wouldn’t fit in an apple box and had to go into a huge bag!); a set of knitted toys in the shape of vegetables – an aubergine, sweetcorn etc; handmade quilts covered in little animals; a new duvet; lots of schoolbag equipment; a lovely cherry coloured adult bike; four or five shiny crutches and so on. 

Michael has spent a couple of days so far this week weighing and labeling some of the boxes and preparing them for shipment.  We are estimating that we must be near completing enough boxes for the next load!  This will be an exciting moment.

As I said in my last blog the village clubs have now been shut and on December 3^rd the club in the village of Baghramian (just outside Yerevan) will be doing their Christmas presentation and shutting.  We got a phonecall last week reminding us that Christmas presents are needed to give to about 120 children in the Yerevan and Baghramian clubs.  We were so thankful when we were able to ask the ladies who work in our warehouse in Yerevan and they were able to put together lovely gifts from the container that arrived in the summer.  We only had to spend some money on sweets and also to buy aftershave for the teen lads (as nothing suitable was found for them).  Imagine how much more we would have had to spend if we had to buy toys, colouring pencils etc all there!

By the way, in talking to one of the leaders of the children’s clubs about these presents I learnt the rest of the story that I related in my last blog.  I told you that we had to shut the village club as the children were all jogging round the room during the lesson as they were so cold.  At the end of the club the leaders made the announcement that due to the severe cold they had decided to shut the club and would not be returning next week.  Some of the little children immediately stopped their jogging and turned with teary eyes to the leaders “Oh no, please come, please come back.  We promise not to be cold, we won’t be cold.  See – already we are not cold!”  Apparently as they said this their teeth were chattering with the cold!  That touched us to the heart!