Even I can get frustrated…

Today I am having a frustrating day. As you may have gathered from my previous entries, I am among the most positive people I know (my husband—who can be slightly Eeyore-ish—cannot understand how I can maintain such a sunny outlook without seriously depleting my energy supplies…) and it really is difficult to get me to abandon my typical cheerful approach to things. Well, today I have hit upon a serious frustration trigger: my whiz-bang ACN mobile phone. You will remember (fondly, I hope) my trip to Liverpool last week when I sang the praises of my ‘now it’s a laptop-now it’s a phone-now it’s my office’ mobile. When it works, it is a wondrous thing; when it refuses to accept new incoming emails and defies my gentle coercion for a whole hour, it becomes my worst enemy. Portia is out today because of the tube strike (once again: let down by technology!), so all I can do is sit tight and wait. Argh!

On a happier note (much happier, now that I think about it!), I spent part of my morning drafting a letter to a dean of a group of parishes in the NW (who shall remain anonymous just in case!) to ask to be allowed to give some appeals in his area. Fingers crossed! I am new at this, so I tried to approach gently, but enthusiastically—which sort of comes naturally to me anyway. No point in putting someone off with an initial hard sell. So, now I wait. I’d love to hear back within the next week or so, but, if not,  I am prepared to ring and see what’s up. I listened carefully at the Area Secretaries’ Conference back in March and it seemed as if most of them use 2 separate methods of approach—but in different orders depending on their personal preferences. I’ll try writing first this time and then phoning if necessary, but if this doesn’t work I’ll have learned my lesson!  One would think that getting into a parish to spread the word about the persecution of Christians, ACN and how we help would be a doddle—and in some ways it is because anyone who truly stops and listens cannot fail to realise that we all must pull together to stop what is going on—but these days parishes have so many demands made on them between special collections set by their dioceses, in-house fundraising for new church halls or heating systems, approaches from other charities, …the list goes on and on. Anyway, I have faith in the anonymous dean; he will read my impassioned letter and look carefully at the accompanying ACN literature and say to himself, “Finally—we have been waiting years to hear from Caroline about how we can support ACN and its work with persecuted Christians.” I just know it.

I feel better already…

Thanks for reading!  Caroline