We had our first CAP day of the year and rather fun it was too.

Firstly we had two visitors, Jozsi and Ilonka Horvath, who run the Chesau nursing home that we sponsor via our ROPE project. Thanks to the generosity of a ‘well-wisher’ they were over in Scotland having a holiday. Jozsi, speaking in excellent English (well, much better English than our Romanian), told us the news from home. Flowers were presented to Ilonka and there was not a dry eye in the house…

Then Jonathan Edwards told us of his visit to Maluti Hospital (home of the CAKE project). We’ll try and post his account along with the pictures soon.

We went through the process of giving to the CAP projects using Gift Aid and presented the accounts for the last year (2006).

Lastly, Steve Logan – one of the CAP organisers – was forced to ‘eat his hat’ following an ill-considered bet that “there’s no way we’ll ever get twelve thousand quid”.

At the end of the morning some GBP2105.09 had been added to the CAP coffers.

Contributions to CAP in April 2007 came to GBP 2,296.55.

Contributions to CAP in March 2007 came to GBP 580.00.

..will be April 21st.

Planned thus far -

• Jonathon Edwards talks about his recent trip to Maluti
• Some visitors, he says, mysteriously.

Contributions to CAP in February 2007 came to GBP 263.00.

Contributions to CAP in January 2007 came to GBP 8099.00.

This consists of the GBP 8000 annual grant from Church funds plus GBP 99 from other personal contributions.

I know we’ve missed the end of the year by a month but never mind…

Jonathan Edwards visited Maluti whilst on holiday in RSA over Christmas. We hope to post something here from him soon.

Ruth Farrer spent Christmas at Chesau working hard! More from her soon, too.

The figures are in for the final 2006 funds. The good folks of Crieff Church added some £5400 over and above the £8000 already committed from Church funds. We’ll be having our Church Business Meeting soon to set the budget for the new year in early February. A year ago we wondered if we could support one venture at around £3000. We’re now running two ventures for £13,400. ‘Nuff said…

I got these photos from Lyn Hurlow at Maluti last week. When we first started out the CAP projects Lyn sent us some photos of a number of the kids who congregated around the hospital. There was a shot of Neo, abandoned at 9 months and weighing only 3kg. Well, it seems that some of the CAKE money is now going to give Neo a new home. Here he is at some 15+ months. Left to right on the couch we have Mum, Neo, big sister (also an orphan), Dad and brother. At the back we have another big brother and the childminder.

Lyn writes that “the foster mothers of the 4 orphans who were living in the hospital’s paediatric ward are each receiving R350/month. And the baby’s “mom” gets an extra R120/month for infant formula and soap for nappies”. FYI R350 is about GBP25.  A snip and a bargain…

More pics…

Oh the wonders of international banking…

The £6000 going to Maluti has finally arrived ~ I understand it will be available to the OVC folks from tomorrow. Let’s hope and pray that it’s the first of many.

I spent this evening at a Willow Creek seminar in Stirling watching a moving interview with Bono from U2. I remember seeing U2 at the Hammersmith Odeon back before they were famous. He is looking well for all his years. Unfair. He speaks eloquently about being a rock’n'roll star who wants to be taken seriously. He discusses the bizarre ‘currency of celebrity’. I like him. I particularly like his opinion of ‘worship’ bands. If you are interested in knowing more about the brain numbing problems of Africa you can do a lot worse that taking a look at data.org, the current object of Bono’s activist attention.

The next CAP day at Crieff Adventist Church will be October 7th. In the meantime here’s an update of what we’ve been doing in the last month or so.

CAKE: We tried to send the £6000 to Maluti a fortnight ago but failed due to a Bank Of Scotland problem, I think. We’re trying again today. As an aside, for our Worship eXtra last Friday we showed ‘The Orphans of Nkandla’, a very moving portrait of the lives of three families in Kwa-zulu Natal – not that far away from Maluti. Garlanded with numerous awards this BBC documentary is required viewing for anyone wanting to understand the plight of a child in rural South Africa.

ROPE: The Chesau home now has a new nurse, paid for by the ROPE project! More details to follow, but we’ve undertaken to fund this salary for the next three years. Next up are extensive modifications to the kitchen to get then up to EU standard by the end of the year. Again, more details to follow.

Went well! All the technology hung together ~ we phoned Margit in Romania via Skype and routed the call through the church PA. Google Earth made clear the routes between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

The main point of the morning was to show that in this modern world we are very closely linked to just about anyone on planet Earth. Using the ‘Bacon’ number ideas we went through the various ‘degrees of separation’ between us in comfortable Crieff and a typical resident of the Chesau home or Neo, the rescued orphan in Lesotho. The point was well taken, I think.

Oh, and the retiring collection came to £2811…

Firstly, we’ve renamed ourselves from ‘CACAP‘ to ‘CAP‘… Allows us to use more bad puns, is easier to remember and doesn’t sound like a swear word in German.

Secondly, we’re nearly there with the formal launch day on Saturday 24th July.

An interesting day! We handed out ‘project packs‘ containing a copy of the ROPE and CAKE proposals and a covering letter, I spoke for a few minutes about the Business Meeting and the Church’s decision to fund both projects. Figuring that the pictures are worth more than my words we had a nine minute PowerPoint presentation during which you could have heard a pin drop. And that was it – we are deferring a ‘proper’ launch until 22nd July when we will have more time. Even though we haven’t actually launched anything yet as of the time of writing I’ve been handed about £225…

Next CACAP meeting, Wed 28th, 6:30pm Thomas’s House

Downloads:

• ‘Project pack’: a copy of each proposal plus a covering letter
• On the day we played these two powerpoints back-to-back. The ZIP contains a PPS and an MP3 file with the background music ~ you’ll need both, unzipped to the same folder. Both PPSs run on a timer so just start them up and they’ll run automatically to their conclusion.
  • rope_pp.zip, the ROPE powerpoint,
  • cake_pp.zip, the CAKE powerpoint