Monday 20th Jan 2014

Happy New year to all our blog followers. God bless you in this new year and hold you in His hands. 

We've hit 2014 running with a busy first 2 weeks with lots of community groups already on the go. The first week was dominated by the funeral of the husband of one of our local Atholl Centre friends. We were privileged to be able to support the family and hold the funeral meal here, with the service at the Baptist Church next door. An emotional week, sad but with happy memories, celebrating the full life of a well loved man. Last week Baptist Minister's training filled the Centre with wonderful singing (much appreciated by our community guests) and lots of chat & laughter. We had the chance to talk Portuguese again as well as one of the ministers is Brazilian!

We've also been working hard to move the chalet project forward. The tender papers are now out to contractors and we hope to have received all our quotes by the 7th Feb. We need the quotes to apply to the Enterprise Ready Fund. Please pray for the success of that application. Praise God we have had a few more donations for the building work already this year, which is very encouraging.

Last Friday Iain & Anne joined other friends from Pitlochry Baptist Church at the launch of CAP  in Aberfeldy. CAP (Christians against Poverty) is a debt relief agency which supports people in debt, helps them with budgeting, renegotiates their debt and provides them with moral support through befrienders throughout the process. John Swinney formally opened the new CAP project which will serve the whole of Highland Perthshire and said that CAP was a valuable addition to existing bodies as the church is present in every community in Scotland making debt relief accessible in rural communities, where travel is a challenge and comes at a cost. He said that although the perception is that Highland Perthshire is an affluent area, he and MP Pete Wishart (who was also there) see many in their surgeries suffering from financial hardship.(In fact we were told in the CAP presentation that 42% of families in rural Perthshire have difficulty in making ends meet.)  He called CAP a devoted and inspired contribution to tackling financial hardship and welcomed the church throwing open its doors to help people. It's really good to hear that Pitlochry Baptist is joining  Aberfeldy Parish Church in supporting the CAP project.  

So, exciting things happening locally.