While
there have not been any postings on this blog for this year yet, the
new team for the trip to Honduras, has been selected, have had planning
meetings and been working very hard in preparation for their departure
date of April 18th, 2015. September, October and November were spent
baking and decorating our traditional Gingerbread churches. With more
than 500 hours contributed by the team, we made 156 churches which sold
at our St Luke's Christmas Market, to parishioners, family, friends and
colleagues! While each member of the team pays their own way to
Honduras, the money raised goes towards the Project Fee that we need to
pay for our work projects when we are there and also to the church's sponsorship
of three children. This is in addition to
the parishioners and friends who have personally sponsored a child.
We were grateful to some of our family and friends and El Hogar alumni who would come out to help us. Competition got pretty stiff at times as some tried to outdo others in the creative decorating!
We also appreciated Marilyn Barnes' contribution of her note cards again this year. Her art is amazing and she converts her paintings onto note cards which were wonderful sellers again this year. All of these proceeds go directly to our projects in El Hogar. Thank you Marilyn.
Santa Michael and Santa Rick, whose job it was to greet the Christmas Market goers as they arrived in the door, also got a little Gingerbread selling done on the side. Interesting how all the people who arrived got directed to our El Hogar table first!!
Louise and Alan on duty at the Market doing the first shift.
In January, we had one of our detailed planning meetings with all the things we need to talk about regarding our trip. There is much to plan - activities for the children that we do each day, waiver forms to sign, reading through the handbook to make sure we have not forgotten any details, updates on what is happening at El Hogar and what we might be doing there this year, what to take with us, what to ask the parishioners to contribute, etc. We practiced a little Spanish and also shared thoughts on our devotional -about why we are taking this trip, why we feel called and what to pack. Forget the hairdryer and the cell phone. Jesus, the one who invented short term missionaries, is telling us to pack the essentials - a simple message of love, a generous spirit, peace, discretion, innocence, caution, the leading of the Holy Spirit and courage.
We were delighted to have Tom and Jane join us from Cincinnati at our meeting, two team members who come with us most years to Honduras. They had driven through tremendous storms and whiteouts and traffic diversions to get to us in Burlington and we were delighted to have a little reunion with them. This is a old photo from our archives taken in Honduras with one of the El Hogar teachers, Heyser. 
We have now started to make our traditional Easter Eggs as the second fundraiser for our trip and in a day, we were able to produce 254 handmade fondant eggs.
The fun part was the coating of the egg with top quality Belgian chocolate and we got a little carried away at times.
We were directed again this year by expert Kerry Beal, who is The Chocolate Doctor. I didn't know there was so much to learn about working with chocolate, but she was amazing help. Check out her website:
http://www.thechocolatedoctor.ca/
The last step is to package them up and they will be for sale during the weeks before Easter. Well done team!
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