A week of fundraising

Dirk and I had our first big fundraiser on Wed - a Soup and Chili event. It was such an amazing evening. Soo many people showed up...felt like nearly the whole church.

But backing up a little I'll admit two weeks before there was a little freak-out on myself and my mom's part on it seeming like all of a sudden there was so much to do and get ready and the event was right around the corner. I had to find volunteers for the evening, make sure I had enough people making pots of soup or chili, right cover letters for donations from the grocery stores, etc. The wonderful ladies of Brantford's Coffee Break offered to supply many of the pots. Such wonderful ladies. My mom asked a few of her friends to help out and then even more came then first asked. So awesome!!! As the time drew closer things were definitely falling into place.

The only disappointment was that 2 Sundays before talking to Dirk he didn't know if he would be able to get back from his trip in time (he drives a truck for Voortman cookies). I hoped for his sake as well that he would be able too.

Well, it was Tues night, the night before the event and I had to go pick up 10 tubs of 4L Ice Cream from Food Basics. Headed over to the store, down the ice cream aisle, down to the veggie section...wait, what? Where's the ice cream? Back up, look again, back and forth I go. Oh NO, where did all the tubs of ice cream go that were JUST there a few days ago. Okay no worries there are still 2 other stores I can use my donation voucher at. So I head off driving all around Brantford to no avail. All the stores were sold out! How could this be. I nearly wanted to cry by the 3rd store.

However, I started to realize that God had already worked everything out. He'd provided and I hadn't even stopped to think about it or to say thanks. Shortly before I went out to go get ice cream Dirk had called first to say he would be able to make it for the fundraiser (yeah!!) and also to see if I wanted him to bring some Voortman cookies along. I said sure you can bring a few, we are having ice cream though. Standing in the store I remembered this and shot home to give Dirk a call back. I asked if he would mind bringing all the cookies he could after all and we would serve them instead of ice cream. Thanks God for providing for me. Here I am (along with many others) putting on this event for him and I forget to really depend fully on God. Too often we seem to need a reminder.

Though I won't lie, a few parents had to explain to their children that no, there would be no ice cream after all :P lol.

Another note was after I made a reminder announcement in Church on the Sunday before, myself and Dirk's wife, Elaine ended up being asked numerous times from others in the Church if they could make a pot of soup/chili for us!! What a blessing and in the end we certainly needed it as I was saying the turn out simply blew us away. It was such a blessing to really feel the church fully supporting us in being apart of this tour and raising funds for poverty.

We ended up raising $2273!!! Thanks again too all who helped out that evening!

Now for the next one...only 3 more to go.