May Update.....

Early Sunday morning I went to work and discovered two BIG CONTAINERS OF SCHOOL SUPPLIES!! Our friend Mark held a mini health fair with the proceeds going to our Right To Write ministry.... It was wonderful!



What an awesome day! 

We have loaded the boat with about 500lbs of supplies and there must be another 1500lbs in storage at Speedside Church...  We have raised more than half the money we hope we will need and we have 9 churches on board, collecting for us!  We are VERY PLEASED with the support we have received so far and hope to be giving supplies away by early November....  We leave on July 1st, but hope to spend the first few months dodging hurricanes and relaxing along the eastern seaboard of the USA.  As soon as we are comfortable that hurricane season has ended (somewhere around November 1st) we will make our way to Cuba.  There is a new marina in Varadero so we will likely park the boat there and use land transportation to distribute supplies during the month of November....  In early December we will head to Mexico where we will give whatever we have left to children there.  At Christmas, some of our family and friends will be seeing us and we have asked each of them to bring an extra suitcase full of school supplies with them so we can get re-stocked for our trip through Central America to Panama in time for the next Hurricane season in 2015....

2 More Churches on Board....

Last week I attended a Board meeting for the Rockwood/Stone Pastoral Charge...  After a short presentation they were kind enough to agree to each take a donation bin!  Thank you to the kind people at the Rockwood/Stone PC!

Blessings,
Kyle

Amazing Ladies....

Today our ministry was blessed with the work of 14 amazing woman from Speedside United Church, who in less than one day made 378 hand made PENCILCASES!!! 

I arrived to find these ladies organized into a fast paced production line that was turning out 50+ pencil cases per hour! As is par for the course I timed my arrival just in time for a delicious lunch also made by some of the women...

This whole day was organized and co-ordinated by Mrs. Edna Harper, who not only oversaw the production today, but has created a few hundred more of these cases all on her own...  What an amazing person... what amazing people...

The children who will receive school supplies from us will now be getting a beautiful, hand made, draw string case to store them in.  Every single yard of fabric and notion needed to make them was generously donated by people in the congregation...

All I can say from the bottom of my heart is THANK YOU!!!!

Here are a few pictures of the production team in action:

The measuring, folding and ironing crew....

The Sewing Crew

The tricky bit.... Threading the string....

Our Intrepid Leader! 

We NEVER go without lunch!

3 working Stations

Isobelle & Eleanor Cleaning up Lunch...

The Finished Product!

24 Pencil Cases Neatly Sealed for Shipment

4 New Churches Are On Board....

Last night the local Presbytery (all the local churches) meeting was held at our church.  I was given a few minutes to welcome people and talk about our ministry.  I showed the short video and handed out almost 100 brochures.  At the end of the night 4 new churches took a bin and posters back to their church to start collecting for us!  The churches were: Trinity UC (Guelph), Three Willows UC (Guelph), St Lukes UC (Cambridge), and Olivet UC (Kitchener).  with the three bins we already have out at Barrie Hill UC and Speedside UC, we now have 7 out of 20 bins out and ready to collect school supplies!

What an exciting time...  We just need to place an additional 13 bins, and a few other churches who were there were taking the brochures back to their congregations to get approval.  I hope we hear back soon...

These pictures are from Speedside church. Yesterday when I went into the sanctuary this is what I found...  A COMPLETELY FULL BIN!!!! WOW!!! it has just been out less than 2 weeks... Thank you to everyone who is supporting us in this ministry!  The bottom picture is advertising a Sewing Bee that will take place in April...  The people who attend will be making us PENCIL CASES! How awesome is that!

(You have to excuse all the CAPS and exclamation marks, we are just REALLY excited by the awesome response we have received)

Have a great day everyone!
Cheers,
Kyle & Shelley

New Space To Work

Thanks to the generous folks at Speedside United Church, our Right to Write Ministry and space to store the gathered school supplies and a space to pack and re-pack school supplies as we go along.  The room is located in the church and will be an awesome help after we leave.










Currently, we had everything stored at our house and we have been doing all the re-packaging in our livingroom... Now we have everything we need!!

Happily we have raised half of our first year budget of $10,000. Our hope is that we can gather the rest before we leave.... As for collection locations we currently have two with 3 or 4 more almost ready to go.  We hope to have a 20 collection bins set up before we leave in July.

In December we hope to meet up with friends and family in  Cozumel, Mexico for Christmas.  At that time we are hoping some or all the folks who come down will bring an extra suitcase along with enough supplies to keep us going through most of 2015...

We Are OFFICIAL!

This month the Eramosa Pastoral Charge (The church I serve in the United Church of Canada) has officially embraced the Right to Write Ministry as a mission ministry of this congregation....

That means that any donations made (I think just in Canada) are now being made to a registered charity and therefore entitled to a charitable donation receipt for income tax purposes...  This is great news!

We are just getting ready to kick off the program by getting 20 donation boxes out into our community at various churches and schools.  We have also written to some companies that make school supplies to see if they have something they might be willing to contribute.

All in all, we are off to a good start.  The group of people who are there to support this work in Canada has grown to 8 and so Shelley and I will be leaving this work in good hands when we leave in 200 days or so...

This week we got a bank account set up so we can now receive monetary donations.  The supplies themselves are really starting to come in as well...  

More soon....  Kyle

Right to Write!

After 20 plus years as a minister, I realize that when we leave next year this will be a radical change in lifestyle in so many ways. Over the last number of years as we travelled each winter we discovered that there was a consistent shortage in almost every country we visited. That is, SCHOOL SUPPLIES , ie pencils, paper, crayons, color pencils etc.

Thus, we have decided that we will carry out a small ministry as we travel. We have decided to call this ministry, THE RIGHT TO WRITE....

We will be delivering school supplies to as many places as we can on our travels. So far we have collected a few hundred packs of colour pencils, regular pencils and loose leaf writing books. We hope before we leave to gather a few hundred more. And as we go along our hope is that a few people here in Canada will continue to collect for us and ship the supplies in bulk once or twice a year. Or that when people come to visit us, they will bring an extra suitcase full of supplies....

We are pretty excited about all of this and hope that people will contribute to what we think is a very worthwhile cause... If you feel moved to contribute, you can send us some school supplies directly, or use the donate button on this blog and we will purchase stuff in your name...

Cheers,
Kyle and Shelley...