Thanks Ed !

We had a busy weekend. Saturday we took a group of youth to the inner city of Toronto. We brought down chili and clothing for about 250 people. A friend of ours runs a mission there... it is quite the place. Unfortunately it is becoming more and more expensive to find a place in the city where you can afford to provide meals... Many of the churches and community centres want so much money to rent the space... Currently they are set up in the basement of an OLD community centre... it is slated to be demolished in a couple months, so unfortunately it has been allowed to become a little run down. Despite the surroundings, those that came in were treated with great respect and dignity... They were all served an excellent meal of chili on rice , a Cesar salad and a role. the meal also included cake juice and coffee... they even put together take out packs to send home with them.... Bekah spent most of the night in the Kitchen, and Emma was busy mopping as the water was bubbling up through the floors, apparently this happens every time it rains. We had put the call out for jeans and socks, and were blessed to be able to bring down about 6 hockey bags of supplies. The youth band even brought there instruments and played while people were eating...
We had made so much Chili, that we had enough left over for a little birthday party for Ed on Sunday night... Ed and Natasha stayed with us last night, ... Once again not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to be "On John and Julies Blog " , Ed and Natasha pose with a piece of his birthday cake...

Any opportunity that we have to spend with them is such an incredible blessing to us... His stories and his experiences always inspire us to do more.. they reinforce the fact that if we are willing, there is very little that we can not accomplish.... At one point Ed looked at Julie and said..." Are you not concerned about leaving John in Central Asia for a month ? "...That's when he added that he is going to try to make it there for the last week of my stay, and that he was long over due for a real "ED venture"....lol...so yes ...NOW Julie has something to worry about....Thanks Ed for that..