SINCERE thanks have been expressed by the people of Moldova to those in Devon who have donated gifts to help improve their daily lives in one of the poorest countries in Europe. For many years local people have been bringing or offering goods and gifts to Ursula Radford at Buttercup Cottage, South Zeal, for the Kurds, the Romanians and others in need in eastern Europe, most recently the people of Moldova. Women from Okehampton?s Roman Catholic Church put together personal items in shoe boxes. Others have donated clothes, medicines and sewing machines, local schools have donated educational equipment, books and toys. During the year CR2EE (Christian Response to Eastern Europe) has continued its ?Unusual Gift? scheme to try to make life a little better for people in Moldova. A Devon doctor recently accompanied a CR2EE organiser on a mission to Moldova and all the notes in the doctor?s diary confirm how vital the help from the county is to those in need, including Christina and her younger sister who live with their mother and three siblings in Sipoteni village and of whom he wrote: ?We found that they had no food in the house; the last meal the day before had been potatoes and cabbage. We asked what they were to have to eat for supper that day, we were told ?We?ll see?. ?There was no food in the kitchen ? I looked, in the outhouse I found one sack of rotting apples, but there were some beans.? The family?s water was collected from the well 100 yards up the road and the toilet was 50 yards away at the bottom of the garden. The diary entry went on: ?We also identified they had no furniture in the house other than three beds. They only had a few blankets and very few clothes. There were no toys, no books and no other forms of entertainment. ?Probably more worrying was the lack of wood for the winter. With the support of the ?Unusual Gift? scheme we made a note to buy this family some chickens and make a chicken run.? Thanks go to all those generous volunteers who have provided gifts, sorted them, packed them, driven them in lorries to Eastern Europe and placed them in the hands of those in need.