This year our Journey group is smaller than in the past, with only 15 people traveling to the DR for one week from Saturday Feb 9th to Saturday Feb 16th. We have been fundraising and collecting goods to take down to the charities that we work with there. This year we are working primarily with Phil and Donna Williams of Servant’s Heart Ministries. We will also be revisiting some of the projects in Samaritan villages, where we have done work in the past.
On Saturday, January 26th the group got together in Kitchener with all the materials that had been collected, in order to pack it into hockey bags. Since we travel light all our personal gear goes into our 'carry-on', allowing 50 lbs. of humanitarian goods to be packed into each hockey bag. In addition, since we are booked as a Humanitarian mission group, WestJet has allowed us to take an additional 10 units of 50 lbs. each. This enabled us to pack everything that we had collected with a bit of room to spare, which hopefully will be filled before we leave. Bea and I were happy that there was room for 6 team sets of soccer equipment provided by the Georgetown Soccer Club, via local resident Anita Bergsma, who founded Chance to Play, an organization dedicated to giving children in developing countries an opportunity to play organized soccer.
We packed school supplies, baby clothes, dry baby foods, adult & children’s vitamins, medications, personal care products, fabric and stitchery materials, kids crafting materials, bedding, sports equipment, refurbished computers and more.
Fundraising by the group members has brought in over $21,000 to be used for the projects of Servant’s Heart Ministries, including building a house for a widowed mother and her 4 children. The house, which costs $6,500 has already been started and we will provide some labour when we get there. Wow, Phil just posted another picture of the house on Facebook as I was typing this!! Can’t wait to get down and see it.
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