Short Update - Subscription

All, just a short admin update. Ignore the stuff about weblogs in the previous post. I have gone 1 better. I've added a "subscribe" function to the left side of the blog. If you want to receive updates about any time we've updated the site, rather than checking on-line, then feel free to do so. Just type in your email address and press the subscribe button. Hope that helps. (btw, has anyone worked out what a FOE Christmas Message is yet?) Harry

The last few months in the lives of the Turners in HK

Long time since we've updated the blog. Sorry, a bit slack. Much has happened in the mean time, almost all of it related to our work with International Care Ministries. Before getting too far into the post, just a small administrative note. I've added the site to Weblogs (www.weblogs.com). This means that you can subscribe to a service that lets you know when we've update the blog. Saves suffering from the McCarthy fate of logging in regularly in the hope that we've updated. Ok, in order of events: 1. Julie and I (and others) prepared an annual report for International Care Ministries (ICM). To be honest quite a challenging effort. Coordinating information from across both HK and the Philippines can be quite difficult. Also quite a challenge to best describe the programs, showing their underlying Christian motive, but without being off-putting to our non-Christian supporters. The PDF is too large to post here, but I'll get it on a site, and add a link here in the future. We were trying to get this done in time for the annual fund raising banquet (on the 20th November). We got it out with time to spare (about 8 minutes, but that's not important). 2. Julie spent a very substantial amount of time and effort helping to coordinate ICM's annual fund raising banquet on the 20th November. This was a monumental amount of work for all involved (fortunately not me). It was a fabulous evening, and we raised over HKD $4M! Amazing generosity from the people of Hong Kong. While this helped to solve much of our annual fund raising requirements, it has also brought abou some new challenges. We received funding to support over 20 new Special Medical Funds (seriously increasing the scale of this part of the ministry) and to support a mind blowing 30 new schools (we had only 5 prior to the banquet). This is a great blessing of course and a great challenge. 3. A mission trip to Dumaguete, Negros Island, Philippines. 4 families (Turners, Gardners and DeGroots from Hong Kong and the Hayeses from Australia) packed up and left for the Philippines on the 15th December. The plan was to run a 4 day kids camp, targeted toward the children from the Dumaguete Childrens Shelter, the children of some of the ICM staff, and the children of some of the slum church pastors. This was the first such program we had run, and as such was a pilot program. In future, we will target kids of families who are recipients of the ICM programs. This trip was truly amazing. It was a great experience for all of us. We couldn't have imagined before going how much God would bless us on this trip. Working with children with so much energy and enthusiasm and absolutely no inhibitions to having fun was a great experience. There are many stories from this camp, truly too many to post here. Instead, I'll just add a few photos and a couple of little stories. The kids arriving at the camp in the ICM jeepney. The campsite was fabulous, a real blessing for the children who spend most of their time in a slum environment. Each morning we kicked off with a time of worship. The kids just loved it. Their energy and enthusiasm was amazing - a great inspiration. We were teaching some Colin Buchanan worship songs. They learnt them in about 3 seconds and never looked back. Dumaguete has now been Colinised !. Cleo and her friend Olivia (Livvy) dressed as shephards ready for the Nativity play. Jack and his Mark (from the ICM Children's shelter). This was the first time most (if not all) these kids had their faces painted. The kids in the orphange convincing Jack to take one of their puppies home (nb. they did manage to convince him - very easily - but weren't quite so successful with Dad).

Kids dressed as sheep for the Nativity play. These guys were great. They "baaadddd" loudly all through the play (narrative included).

We dressed up the kids in fancy outfits and took photos of them. As a craft activity, we then decorated picture frames that the pictures ended up in. The overall message of this activity was they God had made each one of them special and that he loved them.

I could go on and on. Perhaps some other pictures later, or even a video if I can get it sorted.

Have fun, have a great new year, hope you all had a merry christmas, etc.

Harry & the rest of the Turner family.