IRIS Ministeries

i must also tell you about the trip Virginia and I took to Tasmania before Virginia flew home. Some photos are already on the blog site so stay tuned.

the surprises keep coming.

a precious mystery gift

Last Friday I travelled with Karen in convoy to collect the final donation of shoes from Mt Barker (St Marks Lutheran School). The students were fantastic helping to load the two vehicles and the count is underway in our shed - no final tally but already up to 260 pairs and not half way through the boxes yet.

3 SRC reps were interviewed regarding the process and their insight to the significance of the programme was heartwarming, as well as their compassion and determination to engage with the experiences of others.

The curiosity was a small clear plastic envelope awaiting my collection. It simply had a girls name on it as well as the word MALAWI and contained $25 dollars.

After a few emails, i discovered the source:

A small group of grade 4 girls ( ages around 9 ) had decided to do their own fundraising and baked goods for sale. Their efforts raised $25 dollars and were deliberately and specifically to put toward the costs of the chimwemwe footprints venture. My heart sang and when Virginia heard the news she too was touched beyond belief.

These are the seeds we so hoped would be planted and will grow into the compassionate trees and hearts of the future. I do not know these children, they will likely never meet the recipients of the shoes, but their hearts are firmly in the right place it is a delight to the soul.

there are indeed earthly angels.

Virginia is home

The other news is that Virginia is home and reunited with her beautiful children and family. Her mother, uncle and children were at the airport to experience the joy of her return and Virginia returned with them to the village for a month to recoup and restore her heart!

There have been a couple of emails from her but access is to her computer is limited in view of power supply issues etc - the big news is that the boys have apparently grown! there's a surprise!!

Virginia has however been in touch with the Malawi Revenue Office and we now have a time frame within which the shoes must be freighted so the pressure is building a bit. We have 3 months to get them to her to ensure additional duties and taxes are not incurred.

We have decision to make regarding format for freight and transport both to Malawi and to the village. Any ideas will be gratefully received!

the pointy end of the project...

i cannot believe how time is flying. I have missed sharing the progress of the project with the task of living,funnily enough, creating significant time constraints to the luxury of sharing this adventure!

We are now so close to the completion of the project it is a bit overwhelming. This point has always been the stage we were most concerned about - the actual transfer of such a significant number of articles, so many many more than we had ever initially anticipated.

The team of the Global Dialogue Foundation continue to support us with their encouragement and advice and have lead us down another track - that of video footage and representation of the project.

In preparation for an event in Melbourne, we have been invited to share the project on a larger scale, via pictures and video footage of interviews and the path the project has travelled. It is a fine time line and Karen has been working so hard it is overwhelming to watch. With far more techno knowing than I have, Karen has attempted into the early hours of many mornings to create footage that is able to be used, along the way striking gremlin after gremlin regarding distortion and misbehaviour of the footage as it was shifted from place to place ie computer, usb, movie making mode etc. It will be in the mail today by fast post to global dialogue foundation to see if it is what they are looking for.

If it isn't, it does mean that we still have archival, significant information regarding the path we have travelled and no doubt there will be a place for it somewhere some how.

But how great would it be if our story was viewed at Federation Square in Melbourne?????