Newsletters

Dear friends and supporters,

We take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Container work in the UK: By the time you recieve this newsletter, a forty foot container should have been despatched from Holbeach, Lincolnshire, providing the snow melts! The packing of clothes, crafts, schoolbags, games and toys all happens at Holbeach and up to now the volunteers who sort, fold and box the goods work in two old twenty foot containers. The space is severely limited and the lighting conditions are not good.

Furthermore, the work has to stop over the winter months due to the cold. If the containers are heated, the condensation that results causes damage to the clothing and goods being packed. Over the last few years the work has steadily increased until now there is not enough space for working in, or storage, in the facilities that we own. Last year therefore, we considered and prayed about building some larger facilities which would be suitable both for working in and storing the goods. It was decided to extend and renovate some buildings which are already at the premises. The building project, led by Glenn Palmer, Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Spalding, has been carried out by Michael, and a team of volunteers including friends from Spalding and King's Church in Wisbech. We are so grateful to everyone who has come and helped. Money spent in this work was donated specially to this building project. We are hoping that we will be able to begin using this new facility this summer.

It was the beginning of autumn and Bible clubs in the villages were re-starting. Ruth and the team were heading out to Ervandashad on Thursday morning. Even when I (Perouz) am in Armenia I usually avoid going to the village clubs. For a start the journey to Ervandashad takes about 2 hours – and it is certainly not motorway driving. The first hour is not too bad but the second hour! – the road is pot-holed, and so incredibly bumpy that the charity van winds its way from one side to the other to avoid losing any necessary parts! Additionally the entire village has no conveniences whatsoever, there are no services en route, no little shops, in fact it is just like driving off the end of the map and then driving for another hour! However this particular Thursday I was absolutely determined I was going to be in that team going to Ervandashad. For a start there were some other visitors from England and the moral support encouraged me but most importantly I was really missing the children! I had spent a very precious week with them at the summer camp and was soon heading back to England so this would be my last chance. After Ruth led the Bible club with around seventy hyper-excited children, everyone was piling back into the charity van when I noticed all three of my children were missing. On further enquiry I found they had gone to visit their friends who they had got to know in the camp. We all headed to that precious home for some fellowship and strong coffee! I would like you to meet this family too. As we step in over the wooden doorstep, we have to push aside the heavy net curtain that stops the flies coming in. The house is divided into two rooms – the bedroom and the sitting room. Nver, the father of the home, hears us coming and jumps out of his chair to greet Michael, who has been there before. I can hear the children all playing in the room next door. His wife, who suspected we would be on the way, comes through the door with the coffee already made. She enthusiastically hugs us all. This family is the only Christian family in the whole village. They are very poor – even by the standards of that village. Several years before we met them, Nver developed a degenerative illness which subsequently affected his eyes. The treatment was much more than Nver could afford and so he slowly began to lose his sight. Without their breadwinner the family didn’t know how they would survive. After the fall of communism, the new government had allocated five acres of land to the villagers but Nver would not be able to use this land without his sight, even if he had the money to buy seed.

We are so happy to be able to tell you that we have been able to help this family. For several years now, Nver has received treatment for his eyes – it has actually been purchased in Yerevan, by the charity, and taken to him to use. However, in these dire cases, we wish to not only help medically, but we want to make a permanent difference – enabling people to work and help themselves. A couple of years ago AM paid for Nver’s five acres to be planted with onions – this required hiring equipment, workers, seed, etc. He was also helped to harvest them. With his profit in the spring of 2009, Nver planted more onions and was able to use some of the money to live on too! It is so satisfying to see a family so effectively helped.

(the service is at 4pm or 4.30… or even 5pm!)

I would love to introduce to you some of the members of our church that meet in the charity’s premises in Yerevan. Some of them attend the Wednesday ladies’ meeting, some the Friday’s Bible study and some the Sunday communion service and main meeting. The Armenian nation, like any other is full of eccentric characters, but we seem to have gathered the most eccentrics around us. I would love you to get to know them so I’ll introduce a few of them to you.

Many of the people in the church do not yet have the discipline of arriving to church on time, bringing their Bibles, singing with the rest of the congregation and keeping quiet during the sermon. There was a situation, for example, last year during the ladies’ meeting when half the congregation walked in halfway through the meeting and one of the ladies actually came in at the end just in time for the biscuits! They are however very zealous to learn about the Bible and to gather together to pray. We have been very encouraged to find that after a church meeting the ladies are gathered together discussing what they have just heard and how it applies to their lives.

Sister A. lives very close to the charity building and consequently we have got to know her very well. She suffers quite badly from diabetes and in the hot weather is frequently seen sitting under the vine trellis in her garden pouring cold water over her feet. This dear sister not only attends all the organised meetings but will usually appear just as the charity worker’s have finished their lunch on an ordinary working day. She comes to attend the charity’s lunch-time prayer meeting and then often sits and dries the dishes and chats to the kitchen staff.

One of the little old “grandmas” (dadigs as we affectionally call them all) always shuffles in just in time! She loves coming to the meetings. One particular day she came in and sat herself next to Ruth. The first hymn number was announced and Ruth found the page and handed the book to Dadig, who took one look at the book and whispered loudly “Don’t worry dear, I can’t see anything!” So Ruth took the book back and dutifully sang very loudly so that at least Dadig would benefit from the words of the hymn. When the hymn was finished and the leader started speaking Dadig looked in disgust from him to Ruth and then whispered even louder “I can’t hear anything!” However, Dadig continues to faithfully attend the church, no matter what the weather or her situation. She sits right next to Ruth and holds her hand right through the service as if to hear by proxy!

At the back of the church sit a few rows of our “young people”. I love to see them all sat there and ready to hear God’s Word. Many of them got to know Ruth when they attended the Bible clubs or teen’s meetings and have now progressed and started attending the church. Quite a few of them came to the summer camps this year and helped out in all sorts of ways – teaching the little ones about prayer, leading the singing or cleaning out the swimming pool. The young girls all file into church very sedately and sit very quietly all through the service. On the other hand, the young men are never there at the beginning of the service. Just as you despair and think they are not coming they mysteriously appear, presumably having all slipped in quietly through the back door. (I have never actually seen them coming in). They all sit right on the back row by the door. Some of them are newly saved and very recently baptised and are not at all used to sitting through a church meeting. They seem to feel the need to pop out the door and walk around and come in again by the other door! However it was very encouraging at camp time to see these young men (who are there as helpers) sitting in their spare time with their New Testament on their knees and reading as much as they can. In the middle of the church sit a couple of families, a few of them with their children. A couple of our ladies are the “mother hen” figures of the church group. If any of the dadigs becomes uncomfortable due to the heat, the air-conditioning (which often bothers them even more than the heat) or simply doesn’t feel well, one of our trusted ladies will fuss over them and make them feel special and cared for. They are the ones who go out five minutes before the end of the service and re-appear as the last prayer is said with home-made cakes and biscuits for the congregation. Quite a few of the more extrovert ladies have unofficially volunteered themselves as the announcers of the hymn numbers. They whisper the numbers very loudly from one to another and often with hand actions to help!

We would like to report, with much gratitude in our hearts, how following the last newsletter we were provided with enough funds to make a significant difference in the lives of two of the people mentioned in that letter. Building work has been started on the house of the lady on the front cover of the last newsletter, living in a damp cellar with her family. Materials for a small house to be erected above the cellar have already been purchased and the walls put up. Her husband is continuing some of the building work but the cold of the winter will have stopped proceedings for now. It is such a blessing to know that next winter they will no longer be living in that damp cellar, God willing. Secondly, work has also been started on the house of Romaan, the young injured lad on the back page of the last newsletter. The rubble has now been completely cleared from the premises and some building materials have also been purchased. Monies to carry out these projects have come from donations to the “People in need” project. These situations are obviously only examples of the needs that we see on a regular basis. The charity tries to help wherever we possibly can in whatever way God enables us to do.

“A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.” Psalm 68:5

At the beginning of this New Year, let us remember that our God repeats over and over in His Word how He is the God who cares for the fatherless, the widows, those who others may not regard, those who are easily forgotten and ignored.

 

As Christians, let us start this year with the firm resolution that we will pray for the poor, the widows, the sick and the orphans. We will try our best to make even a small difference in their lives, with God’s help and in His strength.

Your by Grace alone,

Perouz Harrison

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