Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Christmas With The Drop-In...

Christmastime at the Niverville Drop-In is filled with good food and really tacky gifts. But it is much more than just that. We are called Youth for Christ for a reason. We try to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. So we gave it our best shot this Christmas and blessed the drop-in teens and the drop-in volunteers by giving them...good food and really tacky gifts.

Here are some pictures of this years volunteer Christmas party...
Chris hoping to find a gem.
Grace, trying out her new bird whistle.

Melodie inspecting the cheesecakes (made by yours truly).

Quelf, the ultra random board game
Volunteers with their gifts, which include: a marriage certificate holder, a Superman comic and a thigh master.

Kaeleb testing out his new pirate mug/pot/beerstein



Now for some pictures of our Senior High Christmas Feast...


The best picture we have of our Christmas tree.

Feast!

Josiah and Zac fixing our Canada flag Christmas light display.

Feasting!

Homemade perogies, lasagna, farmer sausage, chilli and tons of desserts.

Thank you so much to all the people who donated so many baked goods and other foods of all shapes and sizes. It's good to know the drop-in, which was built to serve the community, can count on the community. If that makes sense...

Merry Christmas and may you experience God in a whole new way!

Monday, November 30, 2009

Niverville YFC Banquet Pictures

Hello everyone that reads this sporadically updated blog,

Here's some pictures of the YFC Banquet at the Heritage Centre this last Wednesday. Our theme was "change". We have seen a ton of change in the community, the culture and the teenagers since the drop-in centre opened.

We watched a video with lots of old photos to show how much the drop-in has changed over the years. We heard what happened this year, particularly...Ecclectomania at the Niverville Fair with Island Breeze, and the 3rd annual townwide youth event, the Super Runningman 64.

Mark, Gord and Cheri (the board chair) gave inspired speeches. One of our volunteers gave his testimony of going from being a drop-in teen to being a burn survivor to being a volunteer for YFC Niverville. We also got a good dose of reality when two of our very own drop-in teens told us what it is like to be a teenager nowadays, in this society and culture.

This is Cheri Downey (the board chair).

Brent & Drew telling us what it's like being a teenager nowadays.


Me telling it like it is.

Gord telling it like it will be.

...and Mark telling it how it was.

Merrick Sandulak giving his testimony.

The awesome jazz band, The BMW's.



Thanks to all of you who came, who wanted to come and who thought about coming.
Come again next year, we will not disappoint. Well, we might disappoint, but God never does...


God bless,
Eric

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Talk at Soncity

Hey everyone,

There is this place called Soncity across from Niverville's high school where students come and eat a $3 all-u-can-eat lunch buffet every Tuesday. Before every Tuesday buffet, one of Niverville's youth pastors or one of us from the drop-in centre gives a "God talk". I gave one of these talks yesterday and I thought I should share it with you all...


I want to talk to you guys about racism. Not only between races. I'm talking about racism between, Muslims and Christians, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, teachers and students. Pride is the root of all types of racism. When you think that you are better than someone, (anyone) in a sense, you are being racist.

Martin Luther King Jr. ends one of his famous speeches with this:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old song:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Paul says something similar in the New Testament...

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under the Law.
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise.

Those are beautiful pictures of unity and harmony in the human race. But the only way that will happen is if every single person looks into their own heart and changes what's not right. I challenge you today to look into your heart and see how pride has blinded your decisions.
You may think that Niverville is safe and free from racism. But it's not. You may think that this guy or that girl is the problem...but maybe you have become part of the problem. Pride is the reason there is racism. Pride creates divisions among people where there should be unity and friendship.


So if you want to change the world...get humble. Humility is the key to understanding other people and where they are coming from and understanding God.


Humility is the key to true happiness.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Short Films by the YFC Film Crew

Here a video i've been trying to load for quite some time. Made by the Niverville dropin centre's very own film crew.



And here is another, more complex, stop-motion film that i uploaded on Youtube.



God bless you,
Eric

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Friday, June 26, 2009

Niverville Fair & Golf Tournament

Hey everyone,

The Niverville Fair was great. I don't know about you, but I really enjoyed it. Thanks Roger (father-in-law) for bringing out Island Breeze to perform on the YFC stage. Thanks Kristen and Bethany (sisters) who put the Island Breeze/Drop-in/Weird Moustache Man float together. Thanks Dad (Valleywest Landscaping Ltd. owner) for driving the float, just like the good ol' Maranatha float days. Thanks to all the peeps who rode on the float or unicycled/skateboarded around the float, Josiah, Zach, Riley, Brent, Seaver, Jeremy, Chris, Ben, Roger, etc. Thanks to the fair committee, especially Elaine Krahn and Bruce Neufeld for providing YFC with a stage and sound equipment. Thanks to our sound guy, Vince Taylor (head of lighting at the MTS Centre) for excellent sound. Thanks to Rory and Greg for setting everything up on the stage. Thanks to Out of Darkness for a killer show and for letting me use your drums, Andrew. Thanks to Riley(dij. master) who played with Guerilla Warfare. Thanks to everyone who setup and took down the stage equipment, Josiah, David, Chris, Ben, etc. Thanks to Zach (unicyclist extraordinaire) for filming Eccletomania.






Hope everyone enjoyed Ecclectomania and the float featuring Island Breeze. In case you missed our children's feature on the Sunday service, we did a modern version of the Good Samaritan story and called it the Good Steinbacher story. Thanks to Gord, Sammy, the ninjas, desperados, Hannah Montana, Tony Hawk and the Good Steinbacher for helping us make the story come to life.







And now for something completely different...

The 2009 Niverville YFC Golf Tournament was a hit this year. It went very smooth. Thanks to Melissa, our fearless volunteer who sat in the blazing sun at one of the prize holes all day. Thanks to Ed Dale and Carl Fast for making my day a bit more exciting by getting the closest to the pin on the 2010 Mustang hole-in-one hole. Thanks to all the golfers, especially Tim, Colette, Henry, Ed and last but definitely not least...Gary, Brian, Chris and Sherwood.

The day was perfect (it started pouring just as we got back to the drop-in after the tournament, praise God). The food was great. Thanks to the drop-in teens who finished off the leftover ribs (Drew). And having the support of a richly blessed community is priceless.

Thank you everyone and have a great summer.

Friday, April 17, 2009

the CRAVE! is coming up...

Enjoy this video i just made with last year's Crave footage with narration help from Gordon Kroeker.

Ever seen a Christian rave...in NIVERVILLE?!?!?

Well it happened and it's happening again on Friday, May 1st!