Lots To Celebrate

We want to say a big thank you to everyone who joined us on Saturday at our Annual Celebration in Stirling. We had a lot to celebrate this year and it was great to be able to share in this with people who joined us from all over the country.

We celebrated the amazing provision of God, providing the right people and the right resources at the right time to allow us both to exceed our commitments to our partner projects across Africa and Asia, and to make significant investment in strengthening and improving our work in Scotland for the long term.

We celebrated the wonderful generosity of people, inspired by God, who, months or years ago chose to give a future gift in their will.

We celebrated the renewed confidence and determination among the global leprosy community demonstrated by the “3 Zeroes” targets. Brent Morgan, General Director of The Leprosy Mission International, gave us great insight into how the goals of Zero Transmission, Zero Disability and Zero Discrimination will hasten the ultimate end of leprosy.

We celebrated the great work being done to help people affected by leprosy in Nepal. Stuart shared stories from his visit there in February and the amazing response there had been to the Heal Nepal campaign from January to April.

We celebrated the power of good fundraising to change the world. Morag Fleming, UK Head at Alan Clayton Associates spoke to everyone about the principles and power of fundraising that the staff and board have been learning and working on for many months.

Finally we celebrated the new, ambitious idea and campaign that we believe God has given us – to make leprosy a thing of the past. To eradicate leprosy, one person at a time we will be supporting our partners around the world to spot it, treat it and stop it. Linda shared this exciting campaign with us all – you will begin to see these ideas and messages appearing all over the place at the end of the summer and into the autumn.

Jesus healed people affected by leprosy (Matt 8:1-4, Luke 17:11-19). Jesus told his disciples to heal people affected by leprosy (Matt 10:8). Jesus told his disciples to pass on his commands (Matt 28:19-20). And Jesus said “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

We wholeheartedly believe that when we finish eradicating leprosy, 1 person at a time, when leprosy is a thing of the past, in this specific area we will have finished a task that Jesus himself started. Then we will have our greatest celebration ever.

Before that greatest celebration, our next annual celebration will be on Saturday June 6th 2020. If you weren’t able to be with us this year, why not plan on joining us next year – we believe there will be lots to celebrate.