St Mary’s youth group is a lively bunch of young people aged 10-18 based in old Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Since February, we have been a group on a mission. 13 of our older members (aged 14 and above) are heading to Yerevan in Armenia in July to help with an important local project led by Tearfund. 17 years ago, the area was devastated by an earthquake and even now it is still in need of significant help.
Many families remain homeless and impoverished and we aim to make a difference by helping to build new homes for these local people. We will be doing the basic manual labour- mixing cement, moving rubble, digging foundations- all the general dogsbody work! In addition to this, our evenings will involve helping to lead youth activities and teaching English to local 5-11 year olds.
We will be staying with local church families and working closely with the apostolic church in the area. This should be a fantastic opportunity to meet new people and experience a totally different culture (and climate!). For the last few months we’ve been concentrating on raising the £800 per person required- it’s been a real challenge so far- some of our members have enjoyed the delights of manure-shovelling, moss-scraping and attempting to outwit fearsome hounds whilst delivering leaflets! However, we still need £3000 to reach our total so all contributions would be gratefully received!
We would also really value your prayers for our fundraising and the success of the project. We hope to write a day-by-day diary of our experiences for The DOOR so that you can get a feel for what went on and what we achieved. We can’t wait to get out there and we are looking forward to bringing you an update on our progress soon
James Harper and Maria Alexandrou are members of St Mary’s youth group in old Amersham.
Read about their experiences in the September issue of The Door, out on 22 August.
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