Chairman Rob had little difficulty in settling down the small crew who attended, however he did make mention of the fact that “you are a hard audience”!! Constant interjections from the hecklers present didn’t help either.

Anyway it has been an action packed week, with our guest speaker Annie keeping us so quiet you could hear a pin drop, then the working bee at Quality Wool, the BBQ lunch at Lightning Reef AND the wedding.

 

By my rough calculations this equates to over 23,400 sets (over 550 knitters), taking 327,600 hours to knit and costing $190,000.oo in wool. This does not include the time to coordinate (Patti, Carol and Nancy), put together the sets (60 volunteers on each sewing day), transport, and storage and baling (Ray, Ted, John, George, plus many others). With the internal distribution across Timor Leste being organised by Judite and Mario and Senior Luis, imagine the impact of these wonderful garments being given to those babies and children in need. Congratulations to everyone involved.

 

 

 

Cathie-Lightning Reef primary School BBQ lunch April 5-need to know who will be there as it will be a requirement for a WWC and form 3.

Bruce added there will be a set up from 11 with cooking to start at 11.30 for a 2 pm finish.

Kev in his absence also needs a few more for the BBQ roster at the market on Good Friday.

Judy-Thanked members for their support for Wayne and Linda.

 

The organisation in Bendigo now known as Impact Recovery has grown from the initial business called “Transformation”. Impact Recovery is an independent rehabilitation organisation for people with issues related to drugs and alcohol.

In Bendigo the Connect Church supports the program which is supported financially by the contributions from each participant’s Centrelink or other government support payments. This is roughly $480 per fortnight. The total budget is $250,000, one paid employee and NO government support.

There are 11 men and 8 women in the program at present, with the youngest at 19yo and the oldest 57yo. As Annie said, you would be surprised by the backgrounds of the participants.

The program has a “live in component” as they have two houses (men and women separately) where the participants can stay for up to 18 months in a safe environment. Counsellors involved have walked the walk; hence they can empathise with those recovering from their addictions. They encourage self-control, communication and self-awareness.

Annie said, addicts have the emotions but not the words to be able to describe their emotions and they need to be able to turn their mess into a message.

Annie’s own story was an incredibly challenging presentation for her as she has not really spoken in public. Her father passed away when she was young, and she did not know how to grieve. Although active in all sports and good at school, she felt isolated, “out of touch” and didn’t fit in. In her despondency she attempted suicide when she was 16yo, met a man when she was 17yo, married at 20yo and left a relationship full of domestic violence at 24yo.

As a failure in her own eyes, she turned to alcohol and for 10 years she drank daily, mainly Scotch until she blacked out. To support the cost of the addiction to alcohol she had to resort to “selling on” illegal substances.

When Annie was 34 she met a man who turned her life around. He was a recovering alcoholic and he assisted her to recover from her alcohol induced psychosis over 4 weeks and then for the next 6 months. Annie moved from Queensland to Bendigo and became involved in the Transformation program. Annie needed time to change the ingrained daily habits of the last 10 years. This became a process of self-discovery, learning how to grieve for the loss of her father and then more recently her sister. This process took 34 months and now Annie has been alcohol free for 4 years.

The irony of the meeting of course that we were in a pub, and as Annie said I can now look at the rows of those bottles and not be tempted.

Thank you Annie for a powerful presentation. The questions which followed and the conversations which continued for some time after certainly touched our hearts.

 

Graeme