10 days to Go!

It is less than two weeks before leaving for our service team trip to Honduras and the team is working hard in preparations.   We are grateful first of all, for the many who have supported our fundraising.  We are grateful to the whole team who have worked so hard on the Gingerbread churches, the hand-made Chocolate Easter Eggs, The Friend-a-Child Project over Lent, to Marilyn Barnes for her beautiful note cards and for the donations made by numerous people to this ministry.  All of this money raised goes directly to El Hogar projects which includes the sponsorship of the 4 children that St Luke's supports.  We look forward to seeing these children again - in fact - all the children and their smiling faces. We will also pack up the jeans (new or gently used) from the congregation which we will take with us.  At times, it becomes a challenge to keep 100 children in clothes!
 We took a few pictures at our meeting and look forward to having wonderful additions to our St Luke's team join us when we get there.  We will meet up with our mostly regular team members Jane and Tom Habig from St Timothy's in Cincinnati, Lynne Nokes from Kanata who has been with us several years and a new team member - Bruce Johnson from Colorado.

The rest of the team includes: Michael Skafel, Alan Brodie, Janice Skafel, Rick Reycraft, Carrie Raybould, Rosalind Reycraft, Louise Neville, Terry Raybould, Carolyn Wilkie.

There is much to do in preparation - planning and taking supplies for crafts and activities with the children (soccer balls, games, markers, paints), making sure we have a first aid kit and healthy snacks, sunscreen, and materials for the large art project that we are planning with the children (stay tuned for those details - this will become part of an interesting fund raiser here in Canada when we return.). While at the meeting, we skyped Erika at El Hogar who joined us for a discussion and update and tips on what is needed there.  It was fun to have her as part of the planning as she was very helpful.  We often don't know what is needed there ahead of time so she had done a bit of an inventory on what is on the supply shelves which is a bonus this year for us.  She is not privy to any information about what our work project will be exactly, but there will be lots of work for us to do when we get there.  Something about a wall being built....?  These next few days will be spent picking up the last of the things we need to take and we will be packing them up this Sunday after church. 

In our devotional tonight we talked of how we need to make sure we are prepared emotionally, spiritually and physically.  God has opened doors for us to go on this trip, to have this experience, to grow in our faith and to become better than we are right now.  We look forward to the challenges and the experience and the fun.