Football and Fire

Fire and Football

On December 11, 2009 at 16:00 there was a fire in the Caring Hands storage. One of our ladies was doing the finishing work on some earrings by burning the ends of the string with a candle. She went out of the storage and left the burning candle on the floor. Nearby was a small jar of oil based varnish which caused the fire to spread into the whole storage. The curtains, plastic boxes and chairs melted in the heat. In the adjourning building contains our office and I started removing computers and other valuables. Others were throwing water on the flames. It was a miracle that no one was injured in the chaos. As daylight faded, we had to stop cleaning the mess and accessing the damage to prepare for the Caring Hands football (soccer) tournament finals. We buy beads from the women once a month on two consecutive days. The fire occurred on the second day of purchasing. Fortunately, we had separated the new and beautiful beads to package them to send them to Finland and Canada before Christmas. It was the salvation of those beads. A month ago we had done an inventory of the storage and calculated that the jewelry was valued at 84,000€ ($123,000USD). We did not lose everything in the storage but the final tally we will know later. The fire caused us to rethink what sort of changes we need to do, to do things better. We need to get fire extinguishers and we cannot have chemicals in store. Unfortunately, our facilities are too small and crowded for all of our activities, but we are thankful that no one was injured and that our storage is still standing.

One of our volunteers had left to Finland that same evening. In the airplane she fell asleep and saw a dream in which God called her on her cell phone. “Pia, don’t worry. Everything is okay and everything will work out.” We are assured that God knows Caring Hand’s phone number.

Thanks for your support and prayers.

On Saturday, December 12th we completed the Caring Hands football (soccer) program with a two weekend tournament. Uniforms and footballs were bought for the program. The kids were given certificates, t-shirts, medals, trophies and food. These children are mostly orphans and kids from vulnerable families. The special attention they were given made them feel like they had won the world cup.

Love Milla

Attached: Football_and_fire_2009.pdf