However something else has happened and continues to develop; by using local resources and working from our rented home we have kept our outgoings down, have not borrowed any money and we have achieved so much more in other ways.

Ffynnon has remained very small and intimate and we have met people, and networked with people at a very local level, and at the same time at a regional and a ‘far beyond’ level. I would never have thought that this could be so but community has kind of happened in a very remarkable way. Individuals and organisations, people from the helping professions and people being helped, atheist and Christian, volunteer and professor, (the list could go on), have all come together under one roof and are on one mailing list; we didn’t plan it this way but it has worked so far!

Perhaps this sounds rather grand for a small outfit that hosts a dozen or so events each year but we are truly working hard to do our bit, believing that the counselling, care, pastoral and helping professions need support and inspiration because they must be better than good; they need to be the best. It is our vision to remain true to this statement and to develop Ffynnon in ways that are possible.

The ideas and keen enthusiasm for offering smaller more intimate one day workshops and also residential training, retreat and encounter groups remains high on our agenda and so we are once again looking for ways to use local resources to bring this aspect of our vision into being. We hope to pilot the idea in 2012.

Finally, the plans and ideas for the residential centre have been on this page since our beginning and I think the time has come to just sum them up instead. We will continue to ‘wait and see’ whilst working and fundraising in the present for Ffynnon’s future which is I have to say always at risk.

And so to the summary of the plans to develop a residential centre:

Ffynnon’s Centre would be an intimate setting for in-depth personal and professional development, retreat and respite.

Our hope is that the centre would offer a comfortable, safe, friendly, professional service and environment to all concerned. The focus of the centre would be to offer freedom, time and expert attention to the needs of the whole person including the needs of people's spiritual nature.

We would hope to create an environment where relationship with self, with the spiritual, with others and with our surroundings co-existed in a climate of realness, genuineness, empathy and of sensitive and accepting understanding; a place without prejudice or premature judgement.

We would want to offer a space where individuals and groups could constructively accomplish the full potential of their time with us and to have an open, empowering and genuine experience, a time of individual fulfilment and group identity. In essence we would want to offer simple hospitality, a reflective programme or merely freedom, safety and thoughtful conversation.

We believe that companionship grows when we embrace solitude and that excitement and adventure can be found in our own imaginations when we are given the space to explore our own created and creative nature.

We would want to create a place that reverberates with the sounds of expression and resonates with the hum of silence; a spiritual oasis, a space of quiet in the midst of restlessness, a place to shout from within and be heard, somewhere to take stock and take a breath.