Tues 26th April 2016

April's Thrift shop

A big thank you to everyone who helped out at our 2 weeks of Thrift Shop – first week for the Atholl Centre conference room appeal which made £800 & 2^nd for the refugees (Red Cross & MSF) which made £600. The leftover goods went direct to the local Red Cross shop at the end which will surely raise the refugee total substantially as the room was choc-a-bloc with goods. It is brilliant to have so much support from our local church & community both in donating goods to sell and manning the thrift shop.

Garden toys in the play area

The children’s area of the community garden is now open for use. The sand pit is up and garden toys are in the toy store. This area is particularly suitable for younger children and we hope to see it well used by kids from church & Centre alike, but it’s snowing again! We have a group called Plus Perth (therapeutic gardening for mental health) interested in helping us develop our garden and getting more volunteers involved, so we're looking forward to seeing the garden filled with busy people.

The new sandpit

Red cord card in our disabled loos

This month has been busy with conferences and breaks covering all our bases, starting with a ladies conference, then UFM missionary society, East Kilbride Girls brigade, Persona Counselling here now and finally the Deaf Christian Fellowship to come next week. I’m sure the Deaf Fellowship will be impressed with our new deaf alarms. As well as being linked in to our fire system these flashing & vibrating alarms can also be used as alarm clocks.  We’re also pleased to have received a bunch of review cards and red cord cards from Euan’s Guide, a guide to accessible venues set up in 2014 by inspired individual Euan Macdonald from Edinburgh who was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease in 2013. His disabled access review website & smartphone app is really successful & giving people with disabilities the confidence to move beyond their comfort zone and visit new places.

The new deaf alarms

Nel laden with groceries

Over 90 people attended the UFM weekend conference. All the meetings were here, our accommodation was full and others stayed at local B&Bs or just came for the day. So it was a busy but happy time & had a great buzz. We've needed to replace the vinyl in 3 of our new en-suites already as there have been issues with the quality & then a leak was found when the vinyl was taken up, so it was a huge rush to get it all finished before the Girls Brigade arrived. They wrote "All the girls and leaders of the 7th East Kilbride Girls' Brigade wish to say a big thank you to Iain and his staff for another fab weekend. They looked after us well and the food was great too." It’s great to have Nel our cook back with us after a spell down south & she’s come back with lots of new cooking inspiration too. Sunday saw an amazing new veggie option with lentils, peanuts & coriander which smelled delicious.

David K. our electrical volunteer has been working hard to improve the coverage of our wifi, so trust it to be when the counselling course need internet connection that we were still having problems.Praise God Angela & Richard fixed it yesterday afternoon. Just in time. Thanks guys:)

The food bank continues to be needed too. WA soup lunch has its last meeting at the end of April and then on the first Friday of May there will be a taster session for local ready meals for the elderly. If you’re local feel free come along and try them out.

Leaving the best till last, we have really good news. We’ve just heard we now have enough funding to go ahead with the extension to the dining room to make the new accessible conference room with AV & deaf loop on our ground floor. We have still to set a date for work to begin, but hope it will be no later than June. Thank you for all your prayers. God is good. Now you can pray for the architect’s team and builders as they plan for the start of work.

 May is set to be another busy month. Celia from France will be arriving in mid May for a 6 week internship. Please say hello & make her feel welcome. As well as praying for God’s blessing on our community groups and those who visit us for rest & training, please pray for strength for staff over a very busy period, especially with the build coming up.