Thursday 27th February

Wow - What a month!

Sadness - "Brother" Philip passed into glory this month. Funny , perceptive gregarious & wise, we'll miss him greatly. Philip volunteered in the Centre over the last few years, manning reception, serving teas & coffees, scanning our books with an eagle eye and offering good advice. Philip became Brother Philip when on answering an irate caller at reception he told him meekly he was speaking to Brother Philip and the caller's tone changed immediately with an apology for his language! The name stuck. One day while helping at a fundraising coffee morning he decided there hadn't been enough takers and we needed to boost sales. Our French intern was sent to the main street with a tray of cakes and Philip followed, accompanied by Iain & a chair (his legs weren't so good). On arrival he waved & called to all passers by and the cakes were  soon sold out. Such a showman! He was always welcoming, always ready with a cheerful smile or joke, always supportive and always ready to serve. We've lost a good friend. But he's with his heavenly Father now and his funeral reflected that peace & joy.

Relief - Anne has spent an intensive few weeks preparing a funding request for the Enterprise Ready Fund - a huge application form with detailed cash flow projections for the next 2 years. Thankfully the tenders came in on time and we learned about a 19th Feb deadline in time to get the application out  to be considered by Trustees on the 1st March. (This is to complete funding so we can go ahead with the Chalet, turning it into a disabled self-catering apartment, and the ground floor bedrooms, making them disabled en-suite.) Please pray for the outcome of this request.

Busyness - Every weekend in February has been booked. Most of the groups who came were self-catering and we had 3 youth groups in a row (including SU basecamp for training young leaders). We also had Dundee Central deacons (informing us how our daughter was getting on in Dundee) and Niddrie Community church are here this weekend.  Mid weeks have been incredibly busy too with community groups - Adult Literacy, Youth Club, Mental health Support Group, Disability support Group, U3A (University of the 3rd Age - learning for retired folks) Madcaps (song & recital group), Highland Perthshire Cycling ( Bike maintenance), Art Class, IT Class and the Welcome All Soup Lunch put on by the church ladies every Friday - tackling social isolation in Pitlochry as well as the Baptist Church youth & children's groups & prayer & mission group. On top of that we've had Care in the Community (tackling how to get community & statutory bodies working together to provide for the elderly), Growbiz ( helping locals to set up their own small businesses) and  quite a few other day groups.  

Reaching Out - The Atholl Centre became the official local arm of the Perth foodbank last month and today Angela from CAPS (Christians Against Poverty Scotland) is coming to collect the first food parcel and the manager from the Bank of Scotland has also been asking how people can be referred. It's not just a political ploy, it's a reality! In Perth on Monday I saw a food bank collection box in Tesco and a big notice offering advice to people in financial and food difficulty in the Cash & Carry. More & more people are struggling, so we're glad we can play our part in helping out.     

Monday 20th Jan 2014

Happy New year to all our blog followers. God bless you in this new year and hold you in His hands. 

We've hit 2014 running with a busy first 2 weeks with lots of community groups already on the go. The first week was dominated by the funeral of the husband of one of our local Atholl Centre friends. We were privileged to be able to support the family and hold the funeral meal here, with the service at the Baptist Church next door. An emotional week, sad but with happy memories, celebrating the full life of a well loved man. Last week Baptist Minister's training filled the Centre with wonderful singing (much appreciated by our community guests) and lots of chat & laughter. We had the chance to talk Portuguese again as well as one of the ministers is Brazilian!

We've also been working hard to move the chalet project forward. The tender papers are now out to contractors and we hope to have received all our quotes by the 7th Feb. We need the quotes to apply to the Enterprise Ready Fund. Please pray for the success of that application. Praise God we have had a few more donations for the building work already this year, which is very encouraging.

Last Friday Iain & Anne joined other friends from Pitlochry Baptist Church at the launch of CAP  in Aberfeldy. CAP (Christians against Poverty) is a debt relief agency which supports people in debt, helps them with budgeting, renegotiates their debt and provides them with moral support through befrienders throughout the process. John Swinney formally opened the new CAP project which will serve the whole of Highland Perthshire and said that CAP was a valuable addition to existing bodies as the church is present in every community in Scotland making debt relief accessible in rural communities, where travel is a challenge and comes at a cost. He said that although the perception is that Highland Perthshire is an affluent area, he and MP Pete Wishart (who was also there) see many in their surgeries suffering from financial hardship.(In fact we were told in the CAP presentation that 42% of families in rural Perthshire have difficulty in making ends meet.)  He called CAP a devoted and inspired contribution to tackling financial hardship and welcomed the church throwing open its doors to help people. It's really good to hear that Pitlochry Baptist is joining  Aberfeldy Parish Church in supporting the CAP project.  

So, exciting things happening locally.      

Christmas is coming - only 2 more sleeps! So why am I still in the office? Well for one, we've got guests arriving as a spate of family parties is about to kick off: Christmas at home for one family & we're putting up spare bodies, a Golden Wedding for another with the whole extended family staying here and having their special meal here, a 90th birthday (meal only) and a New Year get together (another extended family do).  The second reason is because Richard, new to our management board, is going to install a new Microsoft Office package on our computers today - another step in improving out IT and helping us to be more efficient in the office. We got 2 new computers during the month. Just in time as one of our computers was playing up, giving us a wee panic as suddenly we couldn't find our files and they weren't backed up properly - both problems are now fixed happily, but it focused our thoughts on good working practices and we're very grateful to our local computer guys who have helped us enormously.
We always intended to update our IT as part of the office refurb, but after the building work it was postponed to the end of the year so we're very pleased to see it happening now.
We had a lovely Christmas Gift in the post last week - a cheque for £20,000 - and we hadn't even asked for it, not directly anyway. It looks as if it is as a result of leaflets we distributed at the Baptist Assembly. Somehow the Goodnews Health Scotland Trust heard our request and decided to make a donation to our building fund. Brilliant! Thank you so much Goodnews Trust. We had 2 other donations from Trusts this month - £5,000 from the Tay Charitable Trust and £500 from the James T. Howatt Trust, as well as confirmation that money already promised would still be available next year and it's so encouraging to know that people are supporting us and willing us on.
More good news: Building Warrant for the chalet block and to put disabled en-suites on the rest of the ground floor bedrooms has been granted and the quantity surveyor is putting the final touches to the tender documents so the jobs can be put out to tender in the New Year. We're doing this now because we need firm quotes to apply to a new government fund called the Enterprise Ready Fund launched last September. It's a shame we have to wait this long before we can apply, but they know we intend to and have started preparations and we've started filling in the lengthy application form. So please pray for a successful application process. This one is a big fish to catch.
November had 4 out of 5 weekends of residential groups so we enjoyed welcoming both elders (Bellvue Chapel) & youth (Perthshire Youth Brass Band & Bearsden Baptist youth) and a few in between. November also saw our advent fair which went well with 14 different stalls selling crafts and artwork with the table fees going to Centre fundraising. We also sold some of our homemade jam as it had been such a good harvest this year. The run up to Christmas saw another stall as we entered a tree into our local Church of Scotland's Christmas tree festival, decorating it on the them of community with a shiny paper man chain taking the place of tinsel and lots of mini Atholl Centres (looking suspiciously like stables) with photos of our local community groups in them. We had a stall in their church hall over the weekend and sold more jam - this time Apple Butter which, when it was renamed Christmas Apple Jam, suddenly became much more attractive. It was a great time of music, creativity and  sharing.
Our community groups have never kept us so busy in December! We have little stickers for each one on our wall chart and it's fair covered in colour. It's also been good to have some community events and we're still being used frequently by Growbiz a local organisation who help people develop their own businesses and by the community liaison team from Perth & Kinross. All very exciting. Well got to go. Duty calls. Have a great Christmas and a Happy new Year.

 1st November 2013

So Iain's at the Assembly as I write & hopefully  we're going to have some new readers of this blog as a result. He's handing out a leaflet asking for help to fund transforming our chalet (the first 4 bedroom block to be built - 1970) into a disabled friendly self-catering apartment with 3 en-suites, one of them for wheelchairs & the other 2 ambulant disabled, and the 4th bedroom becomes a disability adapted kitchen/diner, while the spacious entrance becomes a lounge area. We hope to build this next year, but still need funds to come in to cover the costs. The Trustees took a step of faith however, by starting the tender ready process now ( we have to pay the Quantity Surveyor, architect & Structural Engineer as well as pay for a building warrant for this stage). This is so we can get our 3 quotes from builders and have an accurate idea of how much it's all going to cost in the end and it should help us as we approach more Grant Making Bodies for funding. We really appreciate all of you who have helped so far with gifts, fundraising events and prayers - our thrift shop last month made over £500. Keep up the good work:) If you haven't had the chance to help before, it's not too late. We'd love to hear from you.

October has been mostly a B&B month this year. Between the Enchanted Forest Son et Lumiere event, which seems to go from strength to strength, and beautiful autumn colours we had a steady stream of guests - some of them coming to work, not just to enjoy. The apartment was busy all month with ladies from the Steamie( now performing at the Festival Theatre till the 17th Nov) in Pitlochry for rehearsals.  A group of minister's wives  came for a weekend retreat and we also had a few day groups in for meetings.  

We had the Atholl Craft fair on for 2 weeks as well  - full of colourful gift ideas - and the WA lunch club, now taking place on a weekly basis has got off to a good start. A group of Duncan of Jordanstone masters students came to Pitlochry to help survey the elderly population so they could put together a picture of where they can get support now and what it could look like in the future. They stayed for 2 days, sleeping over here and using the Centre as their base. The walls of the conference room were absolutely covered in post-its as they assembled all their data. This is part of an initiative to help social & health services work with voluntary bodies & community groups to support older people better.  You can see their blog on blogs.iriss.org.uk/pitlochry.

In November we still have one weekend going begging, so if you'd like to have some time away with your group or church try the 15th -17th Nov.There is still some mid week availability for residential groups too - could be a family group, friends, church or charity. The self catering apartment is  also available for most of this month. There's still lots to do here, so well worth a visit. After the Steamie finishes, It's a Wonderful Life opens at the Theatre on the 29th Nov. Birnam Arts also has a few musical events including  Breabach and Black Umfolosi 5. It's a quieter time of year to visit, but the scenery is still breathtaking and we've had some wonderful mists, making the Ben (Ben y Vrackie our local mountain) look like a floating island in the air. We're having an advent fair here at the Centre on the 9th November - a great opportunity to start your Christmas shopping.

November is also Perth Business Month and we've already booked into a few events to help us in our own training  & development. It's also a great opportunity to meet folks we could help or who could help us in the future. At one event Anne will be presenting the Atholl Centre to business angels (investors) and asking them to consider philanthropic investment. It's good to try new things:)

Chris just came back from 2 weeks in Uganda with a team from Pitlochry Baptist Church. Read our facebook to find out what he got to do & get some of his impressions. He'd definitely like to go back. 2 weeks was too short! We're glad to see you back safe & sound Chris. You've been missed:) 

  3rd October

Now we're in October & the trees are looking so beautiful. It's been lovely to watch both trees & bracken turn from green to amber,gold and red, each stage a marvel, and there have been some amazingly sunny days last month. A friend has been taking fungi photos & again what incredible colour & variety this year!

We were invited to the Press preview of the Enchanted Forest last night. It's amazing how they find something different to do every year. This year the title was absorb (hoping you'd be absorbed in the experience of course) and there was an orb theme going on - you could buy your own glowing, colour changing orb as you went in -  with a variety of mini shows to entertain and entrance and lots of different viewing points, some enhanced with orb - shaped frames. In my opinion it was more child friendly than before. There was even a story telling yurt with local scenes in felt on the wall where a clarsach & a lot of imagination supported the telling of a new to me fairytale. And you could take as long as you liked (as long as you made it back for the last bus) so we wandered about at a leisurely pace. We're open for B&B all month (only £25) , so you can come & see the Enchanted forest too (4th - 27th Oct) as well as the stag rut (just started), the salmon leaping and the trees in all their glory. Just don't eat the mushrooms unless you are very, very sure!

Perthshire Amber, the Dougie Maclean traditional & modern Scottish music festival is on from 25th Oct - 3rd Nov with evening & daytime performances, open mike sessions , song bus tours and country walks, so another great opportunity to enjoy Highland Perthshire in the autumn. Come & visit. We'd love to see you. 

There's one weekend left in November (15-17th) available for group bookings, so grab it while you can. We also have late availability on mid weeks in November. Maybe this is your chance to get a last minute break for your family or group. Phone us to find out more. In fact the flat is available for November and December now (We've just had a cancellation for our Christmas & New Year booking), so there's plenty of choice.

Last month was extra busy with back to back residential groups almost all month. After the African children's choir we had the ME week. As usual with people who are chronically ill, some had to cancel at the last minute because of their health, but those who did manage had a whale of a time. Iain had great fun giving the ME group an illustrated talk about Pitlochry through the ages (So that old Roman nail & rusty cavalry sword came in useful after all and the stone with a hole in it was confirmed as probably made with a stone age bow drill ) and Mary (in the kitchen)was thanked profusely for being a “kitchen magician” by the group as they have so many special diets to manage, which she did with aplomb. This group is open to new members so get in touch if you'd like to join them next year. The 6 Circles (disadvantaged group) stay was overshadowed by one of their elderly ladies breaking her leg. Thank you to everyone who saw that on facebook & prayed. She’s recovering well & in good spirits. Ruchill inner city church had a great church weekend & Crieff Tuesday Club (adults with learning disabilities) have just left after a fun weekend. They did pony trekking, target shooting & archery as well as enjoying the Pitlochry shops & cafes. They said," We loved your warm welcome, the freedom to use all areas of the Centre, the food & it was very comfortable. It was all fab - Keep it up!" they said. We're glad you had such a great time guys:) 

It's been a great harvest this year & we've received lots of kind gifts of fruit for jam making. Thanks for all those plums and gooseberries. Anne has been busy! We've a thrift shop coming up next week and some of that jam will be for sale to help us raise money for improvements to our disabled facilities. Again people have been fantastic in bringing bric a brac & books for the shop. So thanks indeed guys. That means there will be a lot to choose from. Come and have a browse. You never know what you might find:)

The WA lunch club has started up again for the winter months and is taking place every week this year. Open to elderly men & women in Pitlochry it's great way to meet people, find old friends and make new friends, so come along & give it a try. Art class has started again as well and is popular as ever. Pam, who's been our ESOL teacher for years, is going to retire. We'll really miss you:( Shhh! There's a party for her next Tuesday at 4, so if she's taught you, come along to say goodbye.

Chris, our general assistant, ( the one who smiles all the time) will be away for 2 weeks at the end of next week. He's going to Uganda with 9 other people from Pitlochry Baptist (the church next door) to help out at the Kitega Centre for disabled and disadvantaged children. They're taking out lots of equipment, toys & clothes etc, so if want to help them take more stuff & you're quick you might just squeeze in a donation before they go. It will be a great adventure for all of them, so please keep them in your prayers. Iain has the Baptist Assembly in Motherwell at the very end of this month. He'd appreciate your prayers too as we look for more visibility & support among the churches.

5th September 2013

Well the new website has been up for about a week now & it's looking good if I say so myself. I'm particularly proud of the new Pitlochry page with a calendar of all the events at the Centre which are open to the public for our local community and links to all sorts of visitor attractions for people coming to stay. What do you like best. Take a look and tell me:)
The staff bedsit is also finished (take a look at our facebook page for photos) and Wilma has moved in.
Amaia had a great time during her month here. It was amazing how many Spanish speaking guests we had for B&B while she was here - and what a pleasant surprise it was for them to be able to chat with her  in their own language. She went home sporting a BenY vrackie T-shirt as our thankyou to her - and she did climb it too (Ben Y Vrackie is our local mountain). As well as B&B we also had an elderly lunch club holidaying as a group and a group of adults with learning disabilities from L'Arche. Everyone ate together at one table this year and this has received a lot of favourable comments and made visitors more aware of our charitable aims, so it's been great to hear their comments.
The Craft fair went really well this summer. As a result of good sales they  raised £1,200  for charity (the result of an agreed percentage of sales), so well done them. A silent auction held  here last Friday/Saturday by the Baptist Church also raised a good sum - £1,800 for the Kitega Centre for disabled children in Uganda. They're sending a team from the church to Uganda next month and the money will go to buying equipment and toys etc. for the centre, which they'll take with them.
The 39th African Children's Choir from Uganda is with us now for the week to recuperate from their journey from the States and to prepare for their Scottish Tour. As well as practicing for their concerts they have their lessons here, studying their national syllabus so they'll fit in when they return home.It's some enterprise! There's playtime too & fortunately we have some games equipment for them to use to make visits to the park more fun. And it's so lovely to have them:) They sing to thank us for their food & give lots of hugs. Mary our cook is overwhelmed every time. It's so sweet.
On the community side there have been a lot of new initiatives from the council and voluntary sector to try to get community groups, social work and health to work together to support vulnerable people in the community better. As well as meeting here to discuss things, we've been asked for our input & support, so we're doing our best to play our part. Some post grad students from Duncan of Jordanstone Art School will be coming soon to take part in a project which should help us think out of the box. Please pray for this initiative, that it will shed light on the process and help people to make a better future together.
Next week Perthshire Open Studios will be on again. This is when artists from all over Highland Perthshire open their workshops for people to see what they do. It's real eye opener. What talent! Our own Kate Kirby (who sells greeting cards of her paintings here at the Centre) is teaming up with a jewellery maker for her open studio this year.So come to Pitlochry & have a look:) & you're very welcome to pop in while you're passing to see what we do here.

Monday 5th August

Michal leaves tomorrow. We'll really miss him:(  Michal came from Poland for the month of July on a tourism internship and has fitted in so well. We've just loved having him. As well as being helpful, polite & hard working he's also very sweet: when he set up Pam's room (the ESOL teacher) he wrote "have a nice day" with a smiley face on her whiteboard. Then he painted a sparrow on Wilma's new wall to give her a nice surprise when she comes back from holiday. But people must move on and he's now going to be working on a cruise ship between Poland and Sweden for a month. Meanwhile Amaia has arrived from Spain. She came 2 years ago and enjoyed it so much she's back - and already roped into the holiday club on at the Baptist church next door this week. 

B & B finally started for the summer at the end of the first week in July and we've had a steady flow of customers both from the UK and from overseas. Some people pass through Pitlochry on their way up to Inverness and find themselves looking for a bed for the night, while for others Pitlochry is their destination. We've had people doing the Rob Roy way, cyclists, theatre goers, birdwatchers, people coming for respite and even people who've found work here and need temporary accommodation. We've had some groups too - a church family weekend 2 weeks ago, a retreat group last weekend and an elderly lunch club holiday this week.  Fortunately we can have them at the same time as the Atholl Craft fair which is on for 3 weeks and there is some great stuff for sale - from bug hotels, which have been very popular (and no-that's not a reflection on the Atholl Centre!) to  fabulously leafy screen prints and delightfully tactile wood turning.They also have an art competition and one of our supporters won for the first time with his painting of Bruar Falls. Congratulations Nev.

Work finally started on the staff bedsit in July. It's taking shape nicely and we're really lucky to have 2 great workmen who've been proactive about problems encountered, helping us find solutions and going the extra mile So thanks guys:) So,the bathroom floor had to be raised to allow room for the pipework rather than digging into solid concrete, then that had to be cleared with building control with all the incumbent sketches - time consuming, but the best solution. In the end we bought a compact kitchen unit housing the fridge, sink and hob in one for the kitchen to make best use of space & time, but were able to reuse an old set of drawers and a spare bit of worktop for the rest - talk about mix & match! Then there were trips to Perth to choose carpet & lino & paint - actually a bit of a balancing act to choose something Wilma will like (she'll be the first to live there) and keep to budget rather than just going for generic colours. Nearly there  though & the boys have been painting in between preparing rooms for the guests (B&B means a lot of cleaning & sheet changing).

We've also spent a lot of time populating the new website ready for launch any day now. I hadn't realised it had so much content, but I suppose that's what happens when you're trying to cover so many bases at the Centre. The new site should be a lot easier to navigate and to find what you're looking for. There are a lot more photos on it too - and a new colour scheme. We hope you like it.  Pretty please;)