In keeping with our theme of "Making the World a Better Place", our youth developed the "Sunday Sack" to bring in their items for the Food Bank, Operation Clean Teen and their pennies for the 'Case for Kids' walk in June. Each child has personally decorated their own bag. Members of the congregation can purchase a plain sack for a toonie, however, if you prefer a special bag that is hand-designed by one of the children, then the cost is $5.00. All proceeds from these tote bags will go towards one of our youth outreach projects.
Currently, the children are raising money to purchase animals and school supplies for several families through the World Vision Christmas catalogue. In the New Year, we hope to sponsor a child through World Vision. The children have already asked to sponsor a girl and some of them are researching which country they would like to select. All of the youth will be responsible at some point to write letters and submit pictures to our new friend.
The "Sol Cafe" musical program continues to run from 9:00 - 10:00 every Sunday morning. With the expertise of Rob Blunsdon and Tony Lalonde, the band has found 5 new members this Fall and hopefully this new group of promising musicians will be able to perform soon.

Enter the Welcome Desk. While visiting a number of churches over the past year, we discovered that a few churches have some amazing ideas for welcoming people to their services, and then going a little farther after their Worship is over. Imagine folks like Audrey Duncan and Helen Hore having other folks to back them up when they greet someone new; perhaps some folks to escort new people to a pew, introduce them around. Maybe some kids could escort a family to youth time and introduce the kids to the youth time leaders. During coffee hour, wouldn’t it be nice for newcomers to have a spot reserved for them, where volunteers could strike up a conversation and offer information about our church and how they can become involved? The auditorium can look quite intimidating when you don’t know anyone. I wonder what the response would be in a family searching for a new church if we called them the following week and/or sent them a card that said we were happy to meet them? If this family or perhaps a widowed senior came back for another week, do we believe that they just might stay if we assigned a "Welcome Buddy" who could help them really become a part of the faith community over their first year here?
The Welcome Desk ministry will allow us to truly incorporate new people into our church, to help people understand what we’re all about, and to make folks who are just visiting remember our church as a really nice place to go. The people who are already working so well at helping people feel welcome will find themselves assisted in their good work and will, we hope, see a greater percentage of people returning.