Pastor Ron's Deep Thoughts and Shallow Entries: Calvin's Annual Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser

Welcome back to my Blog.

We continue our ministry year with yet another regularly scheduled fellowship/ministry event. Our Youth and others held our annual Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser.

It has become a well-liked annual event here, and this one was no exception.

We are not doing a Learning Opportunity this March Break, so this year I decided we would raise funds for our youth for other ministry events they could go to, as well as for two ministries in Ottawa:

1. The Ottawa Mission

2. Ottawa Innercity Ministries (OIM)

This year, we held the event on Saturday, February 7th.

We had two sittings again at 8 and 9:15 a.m.

If you want to know stats about all the breakfasts we have done to date, please check out last year's blog entry.

This Saturday morning was bitterly cold and windy, but people still came out, which was nice to see.

We started at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. Setting up the fellowship hall for 45 persons in the first sitting and 84 in the second.

This year we decided to prepare the fruit in the morning, and it seemed to work out quite well. We did that from 6 to 7 a.m. more or less.

Phil was in charge of the kitchen crew once again and I took charge of the fellowship hall and servers.

It takes a while to get things set up every year, but eventually things get done.

This year we involved our youth, as well as some young adults and adults. A total of about 17 people helped make the breakfast happen. Everyone always works hard and I really appreciate the effort put in to put on a quality breakfast.

Everyone is still working hard on the fruit.

I always like the end result.

The colours are nice. : )

The fellowship hall is pretty much ready to accept our guests.

The fruit is ready, and placed in the fridge and now it's time to get the stoves and griddles going.

Oh, and yes, we forgot to put coffee mugs out, so Rohan and Alex did that for us.

Here's a fun video of Rohan and Alex getting the mugs onto the cart : ).

Uhhhhh, soooooo Rohan, you can tell you were pretty tired today as you arrived : ). Nice parking job. It was fun to see people block you in and not know what to do about your car : ).

Ola and Emily are discussing batter preparation : )

Freya is getting the fruit ready for the tables.

A row of cooks. I like this picture : )

Megan and Chelsey are getting syrup, butter and jam ready for the tables.

Emma and Anika start making batter and whipped cream.

And our FIRST guest of the morning.

Phil M. Whoot!

Yes, Nathan and Margaret and family did show up, but a few minutes too late : )

Our first shift is well underway.

We had a special guest this morning. Pastor Ji and family were visiting for the weekend. Pastor Ji is getting to know us, and we him, to discern if our paths will merge as we are looking for another Pastor to round out our ministry staff.

They all enjoyed the breakfast quite well and got to meet many Calvin"ites". : )

The food is always good, as is the fellowship.

This year the menu was Pannekoeken, Fruit, Blueberry Pancakes as well as just plain regular pancakes, real and not so real syrup : ), and Orange Juice, coffee and tea (well not really tea as I tried to cheat and warm water in a smaller coffee urn. NOT recommended :) )

I always love the way our church community comes together in events like this and just spends time socializing and having fun. This year we had people from several other churches show up, having been invited by others. Even some who have found fellowship in other churches over the past year or so.