31/03/16

Happy Easter!

Hope you had a great Easter weekend. On Easter day we celebrate that Jesus overcame death - the final frontier - so Easter is a celebration of new life.and new hope. Pitlochry churches celebrated Good Friday with an early morning meditation walk carrying a cross round the town and Easter day with a joint garden communion as well as Easter services in each church. 

Do you like our Easter garden?

Just like the Alps, Above Loch Erichty

There were lots of Easter egg hunts for locals and visitors alike and local restaurants were crammed with family get togethers and hotels & B&B with visitors. We had a few ourselves. However the school Easter holidays are still to come & just about to begin. The good news is the Atholl Centre is open for B&B for the first 2 weeks of April so we can share our amazing scenery and green space with you. Did you know that scientists now recognise there are tangible health benefits from experiencing nature? Here are some pics taken on a lovely walk last week on a beautiful blue sky day not far away at Loch Erichty. Why not book now & enjoy a breath of fresh air at the Atholl Centre.

A beautiful view of the loch

10th anniversary cake

We've been making plans to make the most of the  Atholl Centre community garden too. Anne went to a Trellis conference (starring Jim McCall of the Beechgrove garden) who encourage & support therapeutic gardening. She picked up quite a few contacts & ideas to make sure our garden is used to give our local community hope & delight. A mental health charity called PLUS Perth has shown an interest in helping us take things forward.

Jim McCall plants a tree to celebrate Trellis' 10th anniversary

We've had a few groups to stay this month too. Prestonpans & Lesmahagow Youth Groups both had a fantastic time self-catering and enjoying the great outdoors. A group of elderly Chinese carers came from Edinburgh for a mid week holiday too. Their trips included a Highland Safari and a visit to Blair Castle. They were so happy to be here and touched to be greeted in their own language (We learned  a few words in China at our son's wedding). Baptist minister's wives have just arrived, so it's all go. Just in time to join in with the Welcome All soup lunch. I was hearing recently this lunch club has over 80 locals on their books, so it's brilliant to see a community group using the Centre so well.

We're also waiting with bated breath for the results of recent funding applications. It's looking very hopeful the ground floor conference room will get off the ground soon - possibly even in May - and these final requests will help us implement the plans in full so please pray for success. We continue to fund raise in the community and we have a Thrift shop running for 2 weeks (4th - 14th April) The first week is to fundraise for the conference room - this is the last push to make it happen - and the second is to help support refugees living in desperate conditions through the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres. So please bring us your spare stuff (toys, bric a brac, CDs etc) and remember to come & see if there's anything you'd like to buy too.

  Thursday 25th Feb 2016

Did you ever get that feeling the weather just can't make up it's mind? We've been having beautiful sunshine here for the past week and today it snowed again. It's wonderful to see the spring flowers begin to bloom - snowdrops, winter aconites & even catkins.

 And Pitlochry community has been emerging too with Lent meetings hosted by Churches Working Together in the run up to an early Easter this year, a Big Hearted Valentine's Day Ceilidh to raise funds for refugees and a packed NHS consultation on how to improve out of hours provision in rural areas.

More community groups have got going here at the Atholl Centre too. Madcaps music & drama and Art classes started up again this month, both led by ladies who have worked hard to serve their community, but who have had a series of health knocks over the past wee while, so praise God they're on the mend now. Fiona Johnstone, community liaison for PKAVS, another lady who gives endlessly for the community is ill just now. Please pray for her. And talking about illness, Eve (English as  Foreign Language teacher) who had to give up due to ill health hasn't yet been replaced. So that's another thing you can pray for as a fresh surge of foreign workers will be arriving in Pitlochry soon for the tourist season.

Staff here have been affected by the nasty colds /flu going round too so maybe it's just as well we were less busy at weekends than we anticipated with just 2 weekend groups this month - Persona Counselling training & Dundee Central Baptist Church. 2 day conferences also took place this month and we had a small retreat group  in the Chalet and a personal retreat in the flat. 

Ben Y Vrackie from the top of Pitlochryn

There is plenty of availability for self-catering in the flat & the chalet coming up so do recommend us to your friends. We'll shortly be putting them on booking.com to ensure they get used, so get in now before it gets busy. You can book on our website or at bookings@athollcentre.org.uk or call us on 01796 473044.

 We'll also be open for B&B at the Easter weekend and in the first 2 weeks of April to fit in with the school Easter holidays. I read an interesting article recently about a scientific study pinpointing how nature promotes well-being and we've plenty of nature here, so come & enjoy it & tell your friends.

We're holding 2 Thrift shops over the Easter holidays too. The first week (4th-9th April) is to help us raise funds for the new conference room (see below). The second (9th- 14th April) is to help raise funds for the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres to help out with the ongoing refugee crisis, so please donate goods & come & buy too.

This month has seen plenty of activity from our Trustees with a Council of Management meeting looking at last year's accounts and making future plans. We're pleased to say we're really making  progress with the plans for the new Conference Room. We were 3 grants away from complete funding, but we got a phone call yesterday confirming a grant of £7,500 from the Northwood Trust, which is excellent news, so now only 2 to go. We're presenting a complex application to LEADER, who meet in April for a crucial chunk of funding and also have an important application in to the CMH Trust who meet in March. We're getting so close to finally building! Please pray. 

Last blog I showed the Nick Vujicic book for sale here at the Centre. Here's a video to whet your appetite and make you smile:)

 Mon 1st Feb 2016

Happy New Year! - I'll just squeeze it in as this is the first blog of 2016, but already January is over and we're into month 2. So here's your catch up:

Christmas with the African Children's Choir

December was unusually busy with a 10 day visit from the African Children's choir on their Christmas break. It was lovely to have them again & great fun was had by all, with a surprise appearance from "Santa" in the form of Brian Downs. Pitlochry Baptist also enjoyed  hearing them sing when they came for the service on the Sunday before Christmas. Thank you to everyone who gave them gifts & presents.

January has been a quiet month on the residential side with the flat & chalet being used over New Year, but otherwise no groups to stay. This has allowed us to smarten up the upstairs bedrooms and corridors with a fresh coat of paint and a new carpet in room 11. Our new volunteer John has been a real star & he & Chris have done a sterling job. However this is a good time of year for ministers to come for retreats & short breaks. We had Eder & friends from Brazil (via Edinburgh) and today Grant arrived to stay in the flat. "Just finishing day 1 of a retreat in Pitlochry. I came here hoping to hear from God and I am not being disappointed. The weather is crazy outside but this has been one of the most peaceful days I've experienced in a long time."

Our community groups have started up again however and it's nice to have a constant stream of people most days and to feel appreciated and supported by those who use us. Iain & Anne were kindly invited to the U3A annual dinner - a lovely gesture by one of the groups who use us frequently. And they were invited to show photos of their recent trip to their son's wedding in China at the WA soup lunch. So wonderful to feel part of a bigger family and to have so many people interested in our lives. So the Atholl Centre family feel works both ways - supporting & encouraging our users, but also being encouraged by them.

January has also seen a rise in those using the foodbank. While we're glad to help, it's sad this service is needed.

New books for sale

What would you like to read?

This month we also took the opportunity to refresh our bookstall and have about 40 new titles to stimulate heart, mind & soul. What are you searching for?

We had a day conference with the Scottish Government and the Community Planning Partnership with delegates from all over Scotland last week . They were really enthusiastic about us as a venue, saying, "We wanted to bring people somewhere more ‘human’ than the usual corporate type venue and the Atholl Centre proved to be exactly the right choice. The importance of a personal touch was a theme in our conversations about how to improve public services across Scotland and the way you both took the time to look after us was much appreciated." So again this was a huge source of encouragement.

The other day we thought hardly anyone would turn up to WA soup lunch as the rain was horizontal and the wind was blowing people off their feet. But come 12  o'clock the wind had died and the sun come out & over 30 people had turned up! However the following day  there were supposed to be folk in the flat, the chalet and in for a committee meeting from different parts of the country, but snow and high winds  saw all those cancelled.

Earlier in the month we had flooding in Pitlochry as well. The Dam was overflowing spectacularly, the co-op was flooded and many shops on the main street had flooding in their basements. It's at times like this you realise just how many burns (streams) there are in Pitlochry. Compared to other places we have got off lightly though.

Winter weather's not all bad news as the snow on our beautiful countryside here looks absolutely stunning and there have been some lovely photos taken, especially of local mountain Ben y Vrackie. The fishing season opened on schedule and the ski season has been going well. Winter Words is on at the theatre too.

Winter words on at the theatre

So if you can get here, do. There's plenty of availability in the flat and the chalet and also, since 2 weekends in February (12 - 14th & 19th - 21st) were cancelled in January we have late availability for group bookings in February. Get in there while you can. We've been amazed how many organisations book their conference speaker before they have a venue and then experience problems with last minute venue bookings, as like us many venues are booked up at least a year in advance. So do take the opportunity to book for next year too. Just give us a phone (01796 473044) or drop us an email (bookings@athollcentre.org.uk).

We'll also be open for B&B at the Easter weekend and from the 4th - 15th April, so book now & get in at the head of the queue.

18th Dec 2015

Wishing you a joy filled Christmas 

and a happy & blessed New Year

from all of us at the Atholl Centre

Iain, Anne, Chris & Wilma

                                                     Sat 28th Nov

It’s the first weekend of advent and Pitlochry is hotching with people at Pitlochry’s first Christmas Festival which includes 2 craft fairs and the Church of Scotland Christmas tree festival. Our Christmas tree was on the theme of mental wellbeing and we worked together with Pacer to make the decorations. Christmas is a time of great pressure for people suffering from stress, depression, ill health and bereavement and they need our prayers and support to help them through. That’s why the support groups here are so important. A pocket guide to coping through Christmas has been published by Plusperth & will be available at reception.

It was a great shock to us all to hear that one of our regulars Fred Smith passed away suddenly last week. Fred wrote books here with the help of Jim from Adult Learning and at soup lunch last Friday he had been telling everyone that his latest book had just been published. We’ll miss him greatly. Support worker Pam wrote, “You (at the Atholl Centre) had all become one of the cornerstones of his life: keeping a friendly, watchful eye on him and treating him with the great respect that he deserves.” 

The terrible events in Paris have affected us all and this month we have heard from 3 of our French interns. Clara says “I miss you”. Camille says “Thanks” (for our support) and Alexia says “Pray for France.” Michal has also been in touch from Poland. He is settling in well to his course and produced another new video with footage he took while he was here. Amazingly it features Fred. 

We took advantage of the launch of White Christmas to open for B&B this weekend, the only one this month where we have not had groups. We have had 5 residential groups this month including youth and elderly, able bodied & disabled, church groups & community groups. In the quieter mid weeks Iain & Anne have been to a number of training & networking events to improve what we do here. Iain went to the Scottish Conference for managers of Christian conference and outdoor centres and attended one of the Perth Business Week seminars. Anne went to a seminar about “The future of the Web”, a funding networking evening and a workshop on filing on your computer. She also picked up an award for our community garden at an “It’s Your Neighbourhood” presentation event in Stirling.

Generous donations of apples supplemented the first apples harvested from our garden so we could make apple crumble for our guests and Spiced Apple Jam (available here for a donation to our building fund). Talking about donations, the fund for our conference room has continued to grow and more grant applications have been sent out in the hope of reaching our total in the new year. Please pray for their success. After much deliberation we have ordered the AV for the new room (which had to be organised before year end due to grant restrictions). It will be installed when the new room is built.

Fillers for the Blythswood shoebox collection here were sent off at the beginning of the month and people have continued to give to the food bank. Christians Against Poverty held a special lunch in Aberfeldy where they shared how they had been blessed and been able to bless others through helping people out of debt and supporting them on that journey. They’re aiming to raise another £2,000 before year end to complete their funding. They use our foodbank as emergency aid and Iain picked up a fresh supply of their books and leaflets, so if you want to know more, do pick up their literature at reception.

Mon 19th Oct

Thank you to everyone who gave during our crowdfunding campaign. In the last week with additions to both on-line and off-line donations we jumped from  £2,330 to £6,638. That is amazing. And even better, we discovered that when this was added to the donations to our building fund since April this year, we have raised over £10,000 through private giving. That is incredible. What brilliant supporters we have & what a brilliant God. This means that aiming for our conference room target of £110,000 to start building we have now raised £89,800. We're well on our way, but £20,200 still to go, so please keep on praying. PS. Wow - another £150 arrived this morning! Thank you so much.

This week has been the second of 3 weeks of the Atholl Gallery craft fair which is held twice a year at the Centre. Local artists & crafters use this opportunity to sell their hand-made goods, with 20%  of their profits going to charity each time. It's a great encouragement to local folk whether their crafts are a hobby and people buying their work gives them pleasure & confidence or part of their small business giving them a new shop window and it's good to see people working together for mutual benefit. Our latest video goes behind the scenes at the Gallery & The Rotary Young Artist of the Year Competition as the Atholl Centre promotes creativity in our community.

Also this week we've been busy with B&B as Enchanted Forest gets into it's stride.This year's show is called Flux - yet more fascinating creations in light & sound to delight audiences. The story telling Yurt is there again & a graceful acrobat dances in the air above the loch.They're anticipating 55,000 visitors this year and it fairly extends the "season" in Pitlochry. 

The fact that as well as residential groups & community groups we do seasonal B&B helps us play a part in the town's tourist industry - Pitlochry's main economic identity. Participating in Pitlochry Partnership we network in our local business community where it's good to help each other out. Did you know 2 local coffee shops offered vouchers for coffee & cake to add to our crowdfunding campaign? And when a primary school ski trip threatened to go belly up last year due to the snow gates being closed it was the local fish & chip shop who knocked on our door for help. Being in a tourist area also means when you come to visit for your conference or holiday as well as being surrounded by beautiful countryside you're never stuck for something to do. So hope you can come & see us sometime.

We’ve just been taking a trip down memory lane, looking at past Centre newsletters. It’s incredible to see how God has both used & blessed the Atholl Centre to His glory.
The letters start from June 2008 and have continued twice yearly since. You can read them for yourselves on our website. Just go to the “Support Us” heading & find newsletters in the drop down menu on the right hand side.
Developing our vision
In 1969 the Centre was founded with 3 charitable aims: (abridged version)
To promote Christian teaching & discipleship, especially amongst young people
To build up young people to serve in society
To serve the disabled & disadvantaged in society by bridging the gap

8 years ago when Iain  became manager his aim was to stay true to the original aims of the Centre with one difference – In  the first & second aims, instead of being mainly for young people, education & training leading to spiritual growth & good citizenship  was going to be for all ages.
To make these easier to grasp we created a vision statement (also in “support us”), which distilled these aims into 3 areas: training, bridge-building & refreshing.
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Training - Serving the church – both local & national

Throughout these years Pitlochry Baptist Church has enjoyed the Centre’s facilities having church lunches, fundraising events & packing shoeboxes for Blysthwood in the dining room.  The children & young people regularly use Centre rooms on Sunday mornings throughout the year and the WA soup lunch has progressed from fortnightly to weekly meetings from Oct – Easter. Mission Possible also meets here monthly.

The Baptist Union of Scotland has used the Centre regularly for Baptist Ministers’ training. May 2011 says a powerpoint presentation at the Baptist Assembly put us firmly back on the map, and use by Baptist Churches & support from Baptist Churches has grown since. We are also used by Christian groups of many other denominations, for alpha groups, church family weekends, youth groups and leadership weekends and to support Christian social ministries. About 68% of our residential groups are run by Christians and 56% are some form of training

Training - Volunteering
As well as volunteers from our local church who encourage us immensely, we have had other local volunteers and a lot of foreign interns to help us in the summer, both through Baptist networks abroad and taking interns from our twin town of Confolens to help with their college courses.  Michal first came as a tourism intern, but we discovered he was a skilled video maker when he showed us videos he made for his church in Poland. He writes "One of the better-known benefits of volunteering is the impact on the community. The Atholl Centre offers gardening, housekeeping, maintenance, office work but also general help around the place. We have volunteers of all ages, nationalities and abilities, helping out with the smallest tasks and making a real difference to their lives and the people they meet." I hope you enjoy this week’s short video on volunteering.

Bridge-building - serving our community

 This is one of the places God has led us – to the heart of our local community, supporting & encouraging in Christ’s name.  May 2010 comments on how busy we are with adult literacy, English as a second Language, U3A,  pain-management, disability support, Amnesty International & Madcaps – and we now have over 15 different community groups meeting regularly here. Our good reputation has spread through Perth & Kinross Council and Perth & Kinross Voluntary Services, so we are being recommended for community initiatives in Pitlochry (hosting new support groups for mental health, carers, bereaved folk & building a community garden as well as being the venue of choice for health & wellbeing events)

Iain with Angela from CAPS

We are also the official emergency Centre for Pitlochry with a generator point to use in the event of power failures or bad weather events and we are the local food bank, used by Christians Against Poverty debt counselling in Aberfeldy as well as referrals from citizens advice & social work. As we are known locally as the Baptist Centre, the positive impact we are having in our community is seen by the town as part of our local church’s outreach Bridge-building - Supporting the disabled & disadvantaged nationally 43% of our residential groups are for the ill, the disabled or those in social need. The See Hear deaf Group & Children with Heart Disorders have been regular Centre users for many years and although we have been able to have a number of other groups in this category including asylum seekers, children’s home holidays, alcoholics anonymous & ex-convicts & drug users, it became clear that in order to grow this aspect of the Centre’s ministry our disabled facilities would have to be improved. The 40th anniversary project was born. Praise God for the successful funding of our new disabled facilities, allowing us to build our service to disabled users. Deputy First Minister John Swinney, who opened them last June commented “The Atholl Centre is not just fulfilling its potential in its locality but reaching out to people from other localities, surprise guests & to people in need, which is at the core of the Christian mission.” (Spring 2014)  Iain & Anne were missionaries in Brazil for 3 years with the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS World Mission) working in church related social work and always had a heart for practical Christian love, believing strongly that healing the hurting is as strongly at the core of Christ’s ministry as teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven and that the 2 have to go hand in hand. Here’s a quote from Autumn 2011: We accept people for who they are and where they are. We’re both for people who believe and those who don’t yet believe, people who are healthy and those who struggle with illness, people who are part of the crowd and those who are marginalised. We are open to everyone in the name of Christ. We hope they will in return respect us as “works in progress”, followers of Jesus and running a Christian centre. In spring 2014 we wrote, “Praise God for His provision & this tangible confirmation of our work” The last section of our disabled improvements is the conference room, and although on-line crowdfunding has stuck at £330, off-line we are now just over £2,000, which is wonderful.  find out more Refreshing  - B&B & respite As well as being a charity, the Atholl Baptist Centre Ltd was also set up as a Company ltd by Guarantee because it was recognised that from the start the Atholl Centre had to be sustainable and the practical way of doing that was for the vast majority of folks using the Centre to pay for their board & lodging and use of meeting rooms.  The Centre has always supplemented income from groups with both donations and B&B in order to be there & be affordable for core users. But B&B isn’t just a “filler service”. “Holiday makers come here for B&B from all over the world and enthuse about the warm & friendly service and relaxed atmosphere. We promote a gentle Christian presence, supplementing our caring service with a Christian bookstall for people to browse, Bibles and leaflets inviting visitors to local churches. We are "always ready to give an answer to those who ask the reason for our hope” 1 Peter 3:15.” (May 2011) There are God opportunities in conversations, or when different guests meet, like when an alcoholic was helped to turn his life round by us and one of our regular Christian guests, or when a family from a difficult background made friends with the kids from the African Children’s Choir & experienced mutual acceptance & respect when they came, or when German holiday makers were so impressed that a group of adults with learning difficulties were sharing their breakfast table as equals. Then there are the times when Atholl Centre comes to the rescue – Last year a school ski group stuck on the road when the snow gates were closed in January and a German scout group (who turned out to be Lutherans) flooded out of their campsite, the kids having got dangerously cold and wet, in August. We’re excited that the new disabled bedrooms & chalet allow us to promote respite short-breaks & B&B, and our recent stall at the Kidz Scotland disabled living exhibition showed there is a lot of interest in what we have to offer. So it's onwards & upwards:)