Help gives hope
The Miss Stone Center in Strumica (North Macedonia) supports people with food parcels. Such help is also possible because others donate to the Miss Stone Center.
"If you can feel pain, you are alive. If you can feel the pain of others, you are human." With these words from the Russian writer Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Christina Cekov begins the current newsletter of the "Miss Stone Center". In it, she gives an overview of the work of the diaconal institution in Strumica (North Macedonia) and thanks them for their support in the past year 2024.
Help and compassion
Whether it's individual social assistance, one of the 260 meals that are cooked and distributed five times a week or a visit from a member of staff from the home care project, the people in Strumica and the surrounding area who receive help from the "Miss Stone Center" are always happy.
Those who receive care do not simply benefit from an anonymous service. They also feel a great deal of compassion from the dedicated staff at the center.
This changes things, as the example of 22-year-old Ava, who Christina Cekov talks about, shows. Ava lives with her three small children aged between one and five and her husband in a small, poor hut together with her husband's parents. They are ill and cannot work.
A cheerful woman
This changes things, as the example of 22-year-old Ava, who Christina Cekov talks about, shows. Ava lives with her three small children aged between one and five and her husband in a small, poor hut together with her husband's parents. They are ill and cannot work.
A cheerful woman
Ava's husband has an injury, but still goes into the mountains to cut firewood. He is often away for days and weeks at a time. Ava can't leave the children alone then. That's why she can only work as a cleaner and earn some extra money when her husband is at home.
The family occasionally receives a food parcel, medication, clothes and shoes from the "Miss Stone Center". The empathy and charity she experiences in this way helps to make Ava a friendly, cheerful woman despite the daily struggle to survive. She laughs a lot and says: "God will help." - The staff at the "Miss Stone Center" in Radoviš, where Ava lives, provide 50 people in need with hot meals every day.
Unexpected help
Help and compassion sometimes come from unexpected quarters, as Christina Ceckov also shows in her newsletter. Families from the Methodist church in the Albanian mountain village of Buzaishtë, who have very little to live on themselves, donated 200 kg of potatoes that they had harvested last year to the "Miss Stone Center". They expressed in a touching way that love and hope overcome borders and make life possible.
The people who work at the Miss Stone Center do an incredible job and are of vital importance to the elderly population in the region. If you would like to support them, please donate.
Connexio develop, Zurich, CH44 0900 0000 1574 7157 9, reference "Miss Stone Center".
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