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.....!