Well, hockey started this last Wednesday and we’re into exciting times here at YFCHL. We decided to look into changing venues for our program, and so far, it may just be a big hit! We made the move to St. Mary’s Health and Wellness Centre just off of 20th Street and Avenue N. St. Mary’s is a very old school with a brand new building (2 or so years old I believe) and was built to try and help offer resources to the community. This area needs all the help it can get, and there are a ton of kids around there we can involve in what we do! The staff at the school are absolutely stoked to have us and are just ecstatic that we’re providing opportunities for their kids. The location is a little off centre from where we were, but I’m sure we’ll make do. That’s what we have vans for :).

Princess Alexandra Community School was great to get us going and left some of the older boys with 6 years of memories, but the change will be good. I talked a little bit last year about space and our desire to move to a bigger facility. Well, this facility is most definitely bigger, and I would say way better for what we’re trying to do. Part of our problem at Princess was the nooks and crannies the kids could get into. They could find ways to disappear if they wanted, and it made supervision harder than it needed to be. This school is much more open and the gym is significantly larger. Everyone is in eyeshot (there’s glass wall between the lobby and gym to watch what’s going on and not get hit in the face by a puck!). This will help to keep everyone a little safer and ensure we don’t break anything too often…

That being said, the other bonus about us moving is… new kids. There was a group of kids attending St. Mary’s that had no clue we existed. Now our program runs out of their school. We had at least 20 new kids on Wednesday (I think we’re going to run into our too many people problem sooner than usual…) while missing a bunch of our regulars. (Man… Say hockey and you’ll get a buncha west side kids for sure!) We’re gonna be well over 60 this year. Hoping that we can brainstorm some solutions to “expand” or at least find a way to fit these kids into our program. At YFCHL we’re all about hope, fun and community, and we want as many kids as possible to experience all three of those.

This is such a huge answer to prayer. I had begun thinking and praying about a new facility two years ago, and now it’s amazing to see it actually come to fruition. Jesus loves these kids, despite how terrible some of their situations are, and He’s finding ways to reach them.

God is good.

Three last quick things.

One - If you’d want to partner with me in praying for a female staff for YFCHL that’d be great. The last two years our past intern Kaitlyn was helping us out, but she has moved on to pursue Social Work in Alberta. God directed her through her experience with us and we were blessed to have her, but now we need another girl like her! Part of us having more kids is having more girls and I’d love to have a female volunteer that can speak into their lives.

Two - Our YFCHL budget is on me to raise this year. On top of raising my salary, I’ll need to raise around $4000 to provide this program and experience for our kids this year. If you would like to be a part of that OR you know someone that probably would, please give me a shout and let me know. (I’d like to point out, we provide this program for 60-80 kids for the price it would cost two kids to play AA ice hockey for a year).

Three - YFC has a golf tournament fundraiser this weekend at Greenbryre. The cost is $150 ($75 of which is tax deductible) which includes a bunch of other stuff. If you like to golf and are interested, check out the webpage here (http://yfcsask.com/golf-challenge/)

Thanks for the read y’all. Have a great week!
2 Peter 3:9

New Beginnings...