Wed 25th June

Well the big news this month is that after interviewing 3 people shortlisted from 7 applicants from across the UK we now have our new Marketing Development Officer. Xander has just finished a degree in history and politics, and completing a Certificate in Management (with marketing as part of that course) and he comes with an impressive record of responsibility in the national student union and in the community council too. Xander is full of ideas and enthusiasm, but very capable with it, so we're very pleased to have such a good match with what we were looking for. Xander will also act as duty manager when Iain is on a day off so that we can be open all week and still have time off, which strikes me as a rather good arrangement and will save a lot of stress. Just to remind you we received 9 months salary for a Marketing Development Officer as part of our Enterprise Ready Award and this is why we have been able to employ Xander this month and until at least March next year. Meanwhile we are applying for more funding to extend his employment for another 9 months to a year and we've already had a phone interview about one of those requests, so we're hopeful.

We heard we've been shortlisted for the Santander Social Enterprise Award, so please pray for success there and we had a good interview with the Baptist Building Fund who meet on the 9th July to make their final decision. This is as we continue to fundraise to make the rest of the project happen. The conference room extension to the dining room is next on our list and then making all the upstairs en-suite. We're working towards building warrant for these next bits now.

Meanwhile the chalet has finally reached the con struction stage (i.e.we're finally seeing the first new walls) after a couple of weeks of de struction or "downtakings" where first all the fittings and fixtures were removed and then most of the walls due to be changed were knocked down or broken through. It's exciting to see the new rooms taking shape and we've even got to the stage of discussing doors and skirting boards:) ... and how much of a "fall" ( gentle slope) we need to get the wet rooms to drain properly and what needs to be done to "sweeten" slight level changes (make a smooth transition). At the end of all this the chalet will be full of "sweetness" & light!  Please look at our facebook to see the photos.

And through all this we're still open for business and busy with guests. We've had a combination of groups and B&B this month, starting with the 2nd week of the African Children's Choir leaving us on Friday 6th with lots of hugs and songs to travel to London to make their recording, then a small group from Bellevue Chapel, followed by various B&B guests (including a 96 year old gentleman who was traveling on to Edinburgh to stay in a Youth Hostel after us! and a group of cyclists cycling to all the Olympic gold pillar boxes in the UK in aid of sport relief,  paralympics GB and Tree of Hope) and now we have the Abroath Town Mission lunch club holiday for the week. They're enjoying lots of sightseeing & day trips - Aberfeldy & Kenmore strolling along the banks of Loch Tay yesterday & Queens View today- the iconic Victorian  highland vista - as well as enjoying each other's company.

Community IT classes come to an end this week for the summer but English as a Second Language is just beginning to build up and will continue throughout the summer, especially as more people from other countries come to work during Pitlochry's tourist season. We had a good number of visitors to see the Young Artist of the Year Exhibition and every participant received a certificate this year as well as first and runners up prizes in various categories handed out at a prize giving on Saturday. Spend your prize money well guys:) Although Youth Club also stops for the summer  Positive Choices (disability support) and 4 Ways (mental health support) continue their vital support throughout the holiday period, so please support them in your prayers.  

                                                     2nd June 2014

May has been a busy month with residential groups in every weekend. It was great to have a full house with families of children with heart disorders and to see them enjoying themselves so much. The weather was brilliant so they got out for lots of walks as well as clay pigeon shooting and other activities. We welcomed old faces and new when the See Hear Conference for the Deaf came. People are now travelling to this conference from all over the UK - but then there are no regional accents in sign language.  Etape was incredibly busy as usual with over 5,000 participants again. The race was a great success as the weather stayed dry and the organising team were really happy with the support we provided. Do look at our facebook to see some photos of the event. The Centre was well used. Not only were we  race HQ, but all the motor marshalls slept here and physio massage took place throughout the weekend to help people prepare for & recover from the race. We ended May with the African Children's Choir. Here initially for a week it was extended to 2 to give them time to prepare for filming for Disney's new Peter Pan movie. Exciting stuff! So they're still with us and having  had a nice relaxing time last week with baking, hide & seek, movie night, lots of football and a mini concert for each other ( they wrote all the songs and sketches and choreographed the dances themselves)  it's back to practice this week. A young family staying with us for a mini break were invited to play football with them.One of the girls from the family made them each a wee friendship bracelet to say thank you. So lovely - we were all touched by these kindnesses.

  

On the community side the new set of computer classes is going well and English as a Second Language has come back, so we’re really pleased this provision is returning to Pitlochry.  Eve from P&K community learning is taking both classes as well as adult literacy, so she has her work cut out. Art classes finished this month for the summer and all agree that Dee has done a fantastic job. Now we’re looking  forward to next month’s Young Artist of the Year exhibition. Don't forget to come and see the amazing talent of our local young people. Open from the 16th - 21st June.

Renovation of the Chalet roof has been completed ahead of time and attention has turned to the drains. It took some real detective work to sort out where all the new drains should go so we can take the capacity of the new en-suites when they are built, and they had to call in the mini digger when the ground proved too rocky to dig by hand, but we got there in the end. Work starts on the 9^th of June on the inside of the Chalet to make it into a disabled friendly self-catering apartment with 3 disabled en-suite bedrooms ( 1 wheelchair bathroom and 2 ambulant disabled) and a disability adapted kitchen/diner.

After the successful funding of the chalet renovation we hoped and prayed more would come in for the conference room. We’re pleased to report that another £5,000 came in from the Robert Barr Charitable Trust last week. We have also been pleased to receive quite a few private donations. More applications for that project have been made this month. Please pray they are successful. We've a visit from the Robertson Trust and the Baptist Building Fund this month re funding, so please pray for good visits. Last Friday Anne went to a social value lab in Edinburgh to help us prepare our feedback for the Enterprise Ready Fund. So the fundraising work doesn't just stop when the funding requests have been sent out, if they are successful there's a huge amount of monitoring to do for accountability purposes - so if we ask you to take part in a survey when you come (or when you've been) we' d really appreciate your help in taking the time to fill it in.

Last month the new post of marketing development officer was advertised (for which we got 9 months funding from the ERF) and this week we hold the interviews. Please pray we choose well.

It's been a time of change for our Trustees. Maureen Russell moves on from being a Trustee at the Centre to become Chairperson of BMS World Mission - a huge challenge. Norman McNeish who's been our treasurer since we re-opened in 2007 has retired due to ill health. We thanked them for their faithful service at the last Council of Management with a wee farewell presentation and wish them both well for the future. Jonathan Innes, a chartered accountant, is our new interim Treasurer and Bill Slack,  a former General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Scotland, has also joined the council. Earlier this year Alastair Dixon from our local community, Derek Murray who used to work in a hospice and Richard Tuckley who is an IT expert came on board too, bringing our Board of Trustees up to 8 people. We hope as the board develops to be even fitter for the challenges of the next few years as we grow the Centre and its work.

Fri 2nd May

 Brilliant News: Work started on the chalet roof on 21^st April. As part of this refurbishment the

flat roof is being replaced to improve heat insulation and drainage of rainwater. Take a look at our facebook to see photos of progress so far. It's looking good:) The refurbishment of the interior of the chalet to make it into a disabled friendly self-catering apartment will start on the 9^th June. David Killbourn who has been a specialist volunteer with the Centre for a few years is our Project Manager & has been on site a few times already. Work will start on the ground floor bedrooms, transforming them into disabled en-suites on the 10^th  November. Meanwhile we have put out an advert to recruit a marketing development officer. This position is integral to our plan for growth - we don't want to hide our light under a bushel - so please take a look and see if it would suit you or someone you know. I f you're on facebook please share the advert (Retweet on twitter). You'll find the full description on our website at   http://www.athollcentre.org.uk/pitlochry_residential_centre/jobs.html .

        

However we’re not resting on our laurels. It’s all go to get the next project off the ground, which is to extend the dining room to make a fully accessible conference room downstairs.

Thank you to everyone who helped with the Thrift shop last month. We raised £700 for the new conference room. The table fees for the Craft Fair the following Saturday also went to our appeal. We’ve also just heard we’ve been awarded £400 from the Enchanted Forest Community Fund. All of these contributions add to the Trust Fund requests Anne is making on our behalf.  so that God willing if all the funding comes through before the winter weather we’ll be ready to go ahead straight away.

Praise God we have found a new architect & team to take us to building warrant and then supervise the rest of these renovations - and all in time to satisfy another application. It's an exciting stage to be at and as a result of this newest application I have realised that we have now raised over £270, 000 which is over half way to our final target. 

Residential activity in April was mainly Easter holiday guests. Although B&B was slow the flat was occupied for most of the month and we ended April with a huge & highly successful UFM missionary conference. Community day groups have kept the Centre full of life during the week and of course we had a thrift shop & craft fair last month too. IT class has just started up again for 7 weeks, that's a morning & afternoon session, but WA lunch club finished last Friday until the autumn.  The new Creative Care Challenge Fund was launched here on Monday. This is a £10,000 fund to help people in Pitlochry & area to develop innovative ideas to provide support & activities for local people. 8 people came to receive advice & information on how to set up a business or community initiative, which is really encouraging. There's still time for folks to apply. Go to http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/pitlochry/ to find out more. This is the same initiative which got students from Duncan of Jordanstone to come here to do some research on community care and which has set up Pitlochry Forum, which is a group of locals meeting with officials to try to identify areas of care where the community & statutory bodies can work together to improve. Iain went to Edinburgh last week to speak at a seminar about this as part of the Scottish Co-production Conference. It's exciting to see the progress of this work and to be able to share in supporting our community cohesion.

Guests for the See Hear conference for the deaf are arriving this evening for their annual weekend. This group has been coming for over 35 years and now we're seeing adults who were just young people when Iain was last at the Centre in his 20s. It's so rewarding to be part of ministries which are going from generation to generation. Welcome back guys:)

  

Friday 4th April 

What a difference a month makes! Last time I wrote I was relieved that Anne had finally got a major funding application in and in time for a Trustee meeting deadline. The fantastic news in March is that we were successful! £ 117,343 from the Scottish Government's Enterprise Ready Fund, completing the money we need to start not just the Chalet renovation, but the ground floor disabled en-suites as well. And it includes 9 months funding for a marketing development officer. Watch this space. We're writing the job advert now, so when you see it, if you know anyone who might fit the bill please encourage them to apply.  

This funding adds to £20,000 from the Good News Health Trust, £12,000 from the Hugh Fraser Foundation, £7,525 from the Gannochy Trust and £3,203 through private donations and community fundraising. Praise God for His provision & this tangible confirmation of our work. These refurbishments will make a huge difference to infirm elderly & disabled guests coming to stay at the Centre & the new marketing development officer's job will be to ensure our new facilities are used  to their full capacity by reaching out to people who haven't heard of the Centre yet, and to people who were put off by shared bathrooms in the past. Our goal - to extend our reach and be agents of change in even more people's lives.

So now the next stage of hard work begins. We've appointed our project manager. David Killbourn is an electrician by trade & runs his own business, but he also has good working knowledge of  building & plumbing as he worked as a project manager for the MOD in the past. Please pray for him as this project will be a huge responsibility and for Anne as she manages the funding accountability paperwork. We've had our first site meeting too and agreed a start date for 21st April, so it's all go. 

 The fundraising continues with a Thrift Shop this coming week (come if you can ) and almost every day this week there has been a welcome cheque in the post. Thank you so much for your support. We're beginning the preparations for the next stage which will be making a new disabled friendly conference room (extending the dining room) with built in AV & loop and transforming the current first floor conference room into 3 en-suite bedrooms. This combination is to ensure that we can continue to support financially challenged groups as we minister to disabled, disadvantaged and chronically ill folks by generating income from those who can afford. Please pray we'll find the right architect to take us forward into the tender process.

We've had groups in every weekend in March (and a couple of mid weeks too) moving smoothly from self catering to catering. The local Deli who has been using our kitchen and making the bulk of our food for the past 5 years moved on at the end of February. We're really happy to welcome back Nel who used to cook for the Deli and is now joint running a shop in Aberfeldy, cooking their produce at the Centre and food for our guests too. We miss Mary & Sandy a lot but it's so lovely to have Nel back:)

We've just had a great weekend with URC ladies & their husbands. (The ladies have their conference & their husbands enjoy a weekend away). And before that we had Baptist ministers' wives for a conference and a week & a bit later many of their husbands  here for a Next Stage Ministry course. Mike Bonser commented:

"I have just returned from an absolutely superb "Next stage of ministry" conference, organised by the National team of the BUS, focused on continuing professional development. Thank you."

It's great to see God at work in these conferences and courses.  Spalding Adventures mountain leadership course also came to stay midweek. They couldn't find enough snow for a snow hole but did find some difficult weather conditions to tackle as part of their training.

April is set to be a mainly B&B month. We're open for Easter holiday makers and have taken some bookings already, but there's still plenty of room so do get in touch (01796 473044) if you fancy a few days away in Pitlochry.  

 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.