Hearts & Prayers

Lorraine and her first woven heart

And now…on to the focussed portion of my week; see, I can do focussed! For the past month or so, Scottish Lorraine and I have been quietly working on an ACN offering for Primary Schools. I can’t say too much about this as we are still in the planning stages, but BOY, ARE WE GETTING EXCITED! We have loads of plans to involve schools in the important work that ACN carries out and to raise awareness of Christian suffering even among our youngest people; the systematic persecution of Christians is far too important to allow anyone of any age to ignore it! All of Wednesday was spent working on various documents and texts in preparation for the historic, epic-making Second Summit of ACN Scotland and ACN-NW. What an occasion it was—the pomp and ceremony were unforgettable! I even tidied up all of my piles of ACN literature in anticipation of Scottish Lorraine’s state visit to ACN-NW.

Two hearts made by me

Our meeting was fabulous—we got loads done. We have now generated a wish-list of resources for the initiatives and we’ve talked over various ways to organize our ACN-themed school days. We have even found two primary schools to trial the programme. We have narrowed down the title of the initiative to two choices and this afternoon we are unveiling the whole thing to the Marketing Committee at HQ. We know that they will love it, because it is perfect (well, almost…except for a few hundred more things we need to organize and about a million details that need tweaking). But, by the time it is ready, it will be marvellous; I KNOW this! We rounded off our meeting (which lasted for almost four hours, by the way—it takes a lot of time to create something this important!) with a little arts and crafts session. Part of our offering involves the children weaving paper hearts in which they will each place a prayer; the hearts and prayers will be sent to Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Lebanon. Heart-weaving is a Scandinavian tradition and yours truly is, much to the shame of my children, a devoted practitioner. True heart-weavers are always keen to share the love and to introduce others to this curiously satisfying art-form. I must say that Scottish Lorraine is a natural heart-weaver—possibly there is some Viking ancestry there—surely the attached picture clearly illustrates the pride and intense personal fulfilment that resulted from the weaving her first heart. Just imagine such big smiles on the faces of lots of schoolchildren as they prepare their hearts to be sent to Lebanon. Just to prove to myself that I still possess the heart-weaving magic, I made a couple myself; the results are in the second picture—maybe I am a tiny bit rusty…

Breaking news: I have now scheduled a meeting with the brand new Archbishop of Liverpool. I am so pleased that Archbishop McMahon felt able to spare me an hour so soon after his installation; surely this bodes well for ACN and the Archdiocese of Liverpool!

One final, heart-warming ACN-NW story to end another satisfying week: late yesterday I received this generous, unsolicited donation and, to end this week’s post, aren’t we lucky to live in a world where God inspires people to give so much of themselves for others?

Thanks for reading!  Caroline