Another brilliant Parish Rep experience this Friday—a fabulous follow-on from last week when Mrs Clews, the new Parish Rep for St John the Evangelist, Thornton-Cleveleys (Lancs), asked for more leaflets to hand out after Mass. This week’s excitement was the result, once again, of Area Secretary Chris Robson’s amazing Parish Rep recruitment technique (see post above).
What with all of my meetings this week I have only just now managed to ring the new potential reps from Our Lady Star of the Sea in St-Annes-on-Sea. The first two weren’t in, but the next two were at home and wonderful to speak to. Sister Mary from the local Daughters of Wisdom convent was lovely to chat with and will certainly keep up prayer for ACN and the struggling people we try so hard to help. I have sent her some copies of “Persecuted but never Forgotten”—our new booklet outlining a number of the ‘hotspots’ for persecution of Christians. I think that the content of this booklet, disturbing as some of it may be, is a wonderful tool for focussing prayer—I have a feeling that the Daughters of Wisdom will, too!
My next phone call was also one of those that reminds me why I love working for Aid to the Church in Need. One parishioner also from Our Lady Star of the Sea, just could not have been friendlier or more supportive. We talked about ACN, about the new activities going on in her parish and about how ACN might be supported by the parish in future. She gets a package, too: hers contains some ACN prayer cards with the Angelus on the back—now that she knows that we all stop work and say it each day at noon, she is keen for others in her Parish to do this as well! What wonderful initiative! Maybe we should start a big campaign to say the Angelus every day all over the North West for persecuted and struggling Christians…hmmm. I’ll think about that some more over the weekend.
The day was rounded off by a meeting with Portia, Scottish Lorraine and Patricia Hatton, our Head of Fundraising and Marketing. You might not think that this sort of thing would be much fun, but I LOVE regional strategy & marketing meetings! Scottish Lorraine and I are on our phones and Portia and Patricia are in the Conference room at HQ. We bat ideas around—we talk about what we can do together, about what worked in the past , about new ways to get our message out to more people. Today we even began to discuss how this very blog might go live. It’s always a bit sad when these meetings end and I’ve loads of ideas, but am left back in my dining room with no one to tell about them…oh, well, we’ll get to have another one in a month or so!
I’m off tomorrow to Malta for an ACN conference and pilgrimage. I’ll be away for a whole week, but I don’t want you to panic and so I shall make sure to post two more entries from there. I am looking forward to getting to know my ACN colleagues a bit better, to meeting various people from all over the world with whom ACN works and to having a good look around Malta and its churches and shrines. I’ll fill you in on everything that I learn and see. Maybe even I’ll post a picture or two!
Thanks for reading! Caroline
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