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| What I look like on the internet...
Hurray! Yippee! This blog is now live. This means, I hope, that shortly my readers will include a great many more of you ACN benefactors out there; up until now I could only number among my readers a small (but devoted) following at ACNUK HQ and the occasional teenager staring over my shoulder as I typed. But no longer! From today this blog is available to all sorts of interested, and no doubt interesting, people. Everyone can now keep up with the current situations regarding the persecution of Christians in Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere as I highlight them in my posts; you can learn about the various events and initiatives that I am putting in place for the Catholic community in the North West and North Wales; there is even lots of insider information about the day to day activities that go on in the NW Office with my volunteer ‘staff’ of my family and household pets. What’s not to love?
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| What I actually look like...
AND it isn’t just about my blog going live—oh, no—you can
now follow the NW Office on Facebook and Twitter. We are bang on trend here in
my dining room. Please consider ‘liking’ the NW Office on Facebook and
following us on Twitter. This will help to encourage me through those first
dark weeks when I shall only have 2 ½ followers and I’ll begin to believe that
even my immediate family members haven’t signed up to be my friends on Facebook
(oh, yes—I have been here before). If I can get through this lonely initial
patch, I will be just fine because I DO have friends and people WILL be
interested to find out about what is going on, and new friends and followers
ARE out there; they just don’t know it yet. (I’ll be repeating that last
sentence over and over in my head for the next few weeks.) Details for
accessing my blog, Facebook and Twitter for the NW Office appear at the end of
this entry (but you must promise not to skip this next bit in your rush to follow
me…).
September will be an extremely busy month here in the NW
Office—though this is nothing compared to what I hear is going on at HQ! All of
ACNUK is gearing up for the annual Westminster Event (11 October), which once
again will feature an array of well-informed speakers giving personal witness
to the discrimination and intimidation of the Christian community in their
various countries. (Tickets are £10 and can be ordered from the NW Office or
HQ). I know that this is a long way for us, but it will be worth all of the
travel—I’ll be helping out on the day, so I may see some of you there! Early in
November we’ll be launching our Religious Freedom Report in the House of Lords,
with follow-on events in Scotland and throughout the North West (which is why
you need to be following the NW Office on Facebook and Twitter!). PRAYERS FROM
OUR HEARTS (yes, still in caps!) is nearly ready to go, so shortly I’ll be
asking you to make sure that your parish’s primary school knows about this
initiative—remember, Sister Hanan and the Good Shepherd Sisters are based in
Lebanon, but they are dealing every day with floods of in-coming refugees from
Iraq and Syria. They really need our help!
Just in case you might be thinking that all of that doesn’t
sound challenging enough and I am likely sitting here all day with plenty of
time on my hands, I would like to remind you, gentle readers, that I am also
working on my project with Farid Georges, a Syrian painter from Homs—more on
him shortly—which I plan to turn into an offering for secondary schools—and,
over the first weekend in October, I shall be making my very first appeal for
ACN (at St Catherine’s in Penrith). Am I scared? No; nervous maybe, but not
scared. I can’t waste my time being scared—that is selfish when so many people
need so much help and I have a chance to facilitate this (even in a small way).
September… to some it summons up lazy days as summer wanes and things slowly
start to speed up again; to me it means JUST ONE MORE MONTH until things really
blast off!
I’d like to close this blog by thanking all of those ACN
benefactors, old and new, who have answered our bishops’ call for prayers and
donations for displaced and suffering Iraqis. This week I have been notified of
two more unsolicited donations from parishes in the North West: a big thank you
to the priests and parishioners of Our Lady of Grace in Prestwich and the
Cathedral Parish of St Peter & St Thomas More in Lancaster!
Link to the ACN NW Office Blog: www.acnnorthwest.blogspot.co.uk
Link to us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/acnuk.northwest
Thanks for reading!
Caroline
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