This Conference is Going to be Great!

Fun and fellowship and lots of new information
at the Samaritan's Purse Conference

I travelled to Dudley yesterday to meet the staff at The Village http://www.village-hotels.co.uk/hotels/dudley which is the venue for Samaritan's Purse Conference - first weekend in June. It has been a difficult week for me and I was feeling a bit low - it was not helped by the early start and traffic jams on the way. When I arrived, I was hot and thirsty and not feeling particularly positive about the meeting, sure that there were going to be barriers put up as I explained my plans for the Conference to them.

Natalie, the Conference Organiser met me immediately and got me a drink then introduced me to Pippa who is in charge of getting the rooms ready - (I am sure she has a proper job title!). As we all went through the programme I started to relaxed - want coffee on the demand? Can do. Want more rooms? Yep that's fine. Want us to hide a treasure for you? (http://www.turnonthetap.org.uk/hide-treasure)  No problem. Oh, and by the way we though it would be great if our staff to do a 24-hour fundraising event over the weekend - is that okay with you? Looking around the venue I saw many things I'd not noticed before, the huge pool has 2 Jacuzzis, the reception is bright and large and all the staff have huge smiles on their faces. Natalie loves her job and gave me all the time I needed.

I was treated to lunch and met the hotel manager who was very enthusiastic about The Village brand and is keen to ensure that everything goes right for us. We even persuaded him to help us with the 24 hour event!

I came away from there will my head full of great ideas. Whilst I can't quite yet relax, I am happy knowing that the staff at The Village are on-side and will do everything to make our volunteers’ weekend as comfortable as possible. Samaritan's Purse staff are also working hard on their seminars and sessions so that delegates can go back to their Regions in confidence – their heads bursting with new knowledge about SP & OCC having had a wonderful weekend of fabulous food, fellowship and friendship.

Want to come? You can still book a place via this link  http://www.samaritans-purse.org.uk/Conference-201

Hiding Treasure:What I am Doing This Weekend

Like many people, we love to walk at the weekend. We  live in the most beautiful part of the UK - North Wales (although I know you may challenge me on that) and I am very excited that I can lead people to some of my favourite places locally and raise money for Samaritan's Purse's water projects.

Beautiful North Wales - I may hide some treasure here..

I am going to hide Turn on the Tap treasures near to our favourite walks, parks and beauty spots (I might even hide one in my front garden) and register directions to find it on our website http://www.turnonthetap.org.uk/hide-treasure. In June folk can get directions to find the treasure in return for a donation to Turn on the Tap. When they find the treasure they sign the log sheet but leave the treasure there for the next group to find. Simple! For it to work properly we need hundreds of treasures hidden across the UK so we do need you to take part over the next few weeks. Please ask friends, relatives and colleagues to do likewise and hide a treasure in their favourite place - they don't even have to make a donation to Turn on the Tap.

To make the treasure, you get a small plastic box (I am using those plastic boxes that take-aways come in these days) and put in a water related small 'treasure' and the log sheet from the website. Then mark the front Turn on the Tap treasure and its ready to hide. All the instructions are on our updated Turn on the Tap website. 


Incidentally, I have been racking my brains about what I can put in my treasure box - so I have sent my dear old Mum to town today to see what she can find. I told her it has to be water related, of little or no monetary value and small enough to fit in that box.  Will let you know what she finds! I also thought I might add a little water poem for folk to read when they find my treasure. I remembered this one from when my children were small from Spike Milligan:

There are holes up in the sky

Where the rain comes in

But the holes are only small

That's why the rain is thin

Happy hiding everyone!!

Samaritan's Purse at the Ideal Home Show

Me, with one of those wonderful
£48 Water Filters that provide
clean, safe water for life!

 I was asked to attend the Ideal Home Show for Samaritan's Purse ...no that's not quite true - I offered. Well, it seemed too good an opportunity to turn down. I'd not been to the show since I was a Convent School girl way back in the 60s so I was looking forward to being part of it - although I realised that I wouldn't see much in my hour lunch break.

Our attending this show was an idea that came about because we need to reach a new audience. We have been attending Christian events such as Spring Harvest and New Wine and had many enthusiastic people visit the stand, but that was the trouble - most already knew about us and our work. So reaching out to a secular audience made sense.

The stand was well designed and depicted one of the recipients of our Water Filters with the caption "This is my Ideal Home". We had a bio-sand water filter there - rigged to show clean water tumbling out of it into a bucket, lots of leaflets and a full briefing on what to say.

Despite the fact that many of the people at the show were there to look at things which would improve their own lives (me included I think!) it was surprising how many meaningful conversations we had with people. The world is a small place and I met many folk who had had first hand experience about the lack of clean water in the world. Those who didn't or who thought we were flogging a new kind of water feature for their garden (well, we were on the edge of the Ideal Garden section!) were really shocked by the statistics - 1 in 8 people in the world don't have access to water and every 20 seconds a child dies because of lack of clean water.

Things I don't know after this particular exercise - how many people will act on what they discovered about Samaritan's Purse's work, how much extra money we will raise and why the level of water in the bucket slowly disappeared.....!

ABC of OCC - R

A child at the 'Patarat' community
which is on the city dump

R is for Romania. Where it all began. In December 1990, when Dave Cooke led the first convoy to Romania he only knew that he was to meet a man with a beard at a roadsign outside Cluj, Romania.

Sure enough, there he was. That man was Liviu Balas head of the newly formed Christian charity Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man"). Liviu took them to the orphanages and Ecce Homo has been taking shoeboxes to children in Romania ever since.

The work of Ecce Homo has brought about change for many poor and suffering children over the last 20 years, through Social Assistance, provision of Summer Camps, Children's Clubs and Women's Groups. It focuses on children's emotional recovery and developing their skills for an independent life.

Liviu Balas - our man in Romania

Plus, of course, they still distribute shoeboxes right across Romania (last year it was around 150,000!)  In 2006, Liviu told us the story of Claudiu who was only a few months old when he was abandoned by his mother and left in his grandparents care who were very needy themselves. One night, he was chopping wood with his grandfather and he saw the sparkling of decorated Christmas Trees standing in the windows of other houses. How he longed for such a tree and a warm home... and at that moment he lifted his head up to the sky saw a shooting star and made a wish that he wanted a box of toys as a Christmas gift. When his wish came true with the shoebox - he couldn't believe his eyes! The beautifully wrapped box that he received not only had toys, but also sweets. God's answer to his prayer that night will stay forever as a light in Claudiu's heart.

Liviu says "When you bring a smile to a child's face, you witness a miracle!" Please join us this year and tell your friends and family to make a shoebox - they really do change lives and attitudes.

ABC of OCC - Q

Q - might seems difficult, but no, it came quite easily. In Operation Christmas Child's World Q is obviously for questions. When the idea of putting toys into a shoebox to give to children overseas first came about I don't think anyone thought that there would be any need for further clarification. Get some toys and put into the box, right? Um, nooooo and in the 20 years of OCC I could probably write a book of the questions that folk have asked.

I loved answering those questions and never minded when an elderly lady would be on the phone for 20 minutes itemising everything she had put in her box and checking it was suitable. Because behind all those questions is real care and concern for children. People have seen suffering and want to put it right. But they want to put it right, right. So hence the questions. So keep on asking them - we don't mind - but read the leaflet first as the answers should be on there.



The Wacky Bus -
1993 - 1994

 The daftest question?  In the 1990s we were given an old bus by British Aerospace to take around schools to highlight the fact that we were going to fill the BIGgest plane in the World (the Antonov 124) with shoeboxes. A team of volunteers painted it in bright colours and it had a funny face on the front and 'wings' stuck on the side made of fibreglass. It probably had a top speed of 30 miles per hour with the wind behind it. However, it made quite an impact when it arrived and the children would often ask in wonder - "Does it fly?"



Fying high -
the Antonov 124 - Heavylift's spectacular plane used to
deliver shoeboxes until c. 2004



Perhaps the most memorable (but ironic) question was at the end of that campaign when after all the fuss - hundreds of children, press, TV interviews etc the plane developed a fault and could'nt take off. Miserbably we all clambered on the coach and some wag said, "What's big and does'nt fly?". 

In case you are wondering, the plane successfully took off at midnight and delivered 60,000 shoeboxes to Bosnia. The fault really was a one-off and we used the plane for many years to deliver shoeboxes thanks to a special relationship with HeavyLift Cargo Airlines.

ABC of OCC - P

Romania, Dec 1990 Paul Wilcox in 1990 -
this is the very first image
taken of children with  OCC shoeboxes.

P is for photos. It has been my privilege over the years to be on the 'front line' as images of children joyously receiving their shoeboxes come into the OCC office. In the pre-digital age, the actual prints used to be very precious: I remember choosing prints from contact sheets, ordering many copies which were then sent to newspapers with a plea for them to return the print!

It has been a pleasure to see the work of wonderful photographers such as Jonty Wilde, David Lund, Nigel Dobson and many more.

In the digital age of course, it became conveniently easy to duplicate an image to share the joy of the child - almost instantly. However, the sheer number of images was almost a disadvantage, as everyone on OCC trips took many photos (usually of the same child). They were no longer restricted by the number of shots they had left on their film, so it was not unusual to get a CD containing over 1000 shots from one five-day trip which collated all the images taken by team members. Ploughing through these discs took hours, but of course, produced wonderful results.


Belarus, Dec 2010 Linda Thompson
A sick, abandoned child in hospital
loves his teddy


Now there are more changes as sites such as Facebook and Flickr mean that photographs are easily available to everyone. I have to keep a keen eye on Facebook along with everyone else to see the first images. This is wonderful, but also means that we cannot keep images exclusive to those who perhaps 'deserve' to see them first. The hardworking Area Co-ordinators and drivers who are the driving force behind getting the boxes to the children should perhaps be the first to see the first child get a box, but it is sadly no longer possible to do this. Such is progress: we re-balance our expectations to accommodate changes which can only be to the good.

You can see collections of OCC photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/samaritanspurseuk/