Eat Pancakes and Send Kids To Camp!

Hey! Just wanted to invite you to hang with the camp crew at Applebees this Saturday. Just $5 earns you a pile of flapjacks and proceeds pay for our first round of kids to attend Young Life Camp this year in Buena Vista, Colorado. So awesome.

Applebees YL Pancake Fundraiser
Saturday May 16, 7-9am
Goal - $500 to send kids to camp
Cost - $5

WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING

CAMP ON THE HORIZON
13 kids + 2 leaders + 2 adult guests + Buena Vista Colorado = sheer awesomeness! We've been working hard to prepare kids for the best week of their lives! We've got a great group of kids, leaders & guests who are going to get the first Paola taste of Young Life camp. Lucky.



BIG CLUB
Paola Young Life just took 2 carloads of kids to the Greater Kansas City Young Life Club! 550 kids packed into the pavilion at the KC Chiefs stadium - singin', laughin' and hearing about Jesus. It was a lot of fun! I can't wait to launch a Club right here in Paola!



BAEHR FOUNDATION
We'd love to be supported by a very well known foundation in our community, the Louis W. and Dolpha Baehr Charitable Foundation. The foundation has done incredible things to support our community's youth, including a recent grant to the City of Paola for a community skate park! (You bet that Young Life volunteers will welcome the opportunity to meet kids at the new park as well as take on a few new bruises and rasberries along the way.)

Blake Heid and I had the opportunity on Wednesday to sit down with Kathy Lovig, trust officer for First Option Bank, to talk about Young Life and to ask lots of questions on submitting an application for foundation grants. It was great. And we'll be working on a proposal to be submitted to the Baher Foundation by mid-June.



THE NUMBERS
Jason Runyan hosted our first committee meeting last week at the DeBok house! While there we talked about our primary needs for the Young Life ministry. 1) Financial Support and 2) Committee leadership. We have come up with a scenario that could launch our area into a recognized full-time area with me as the area director in the next 2 months... but there's fund-raising still to be done. For this senario to play out, we need to raise $25,000 over the next 2 months to complete minimum budget with one-staff.

At the end of 2 months, we will review the amount of $ that we have raised and consider our staffing options at that point. If we have raised $66,000 total (we have currently raised $41,405) the committee could ask the region if they would consider hiring me as full-time staff with reduced salary & benefits. If not, the committee considers the raised budget and what we can provide for staffing for Paola Young Life (volunteer, part-time, teacher-staff, intern).



FUND RAISING
I've had the opportunity to sit down with several friends to discuss raising the needed funds to start this ministry. There are some incredibly passionate and gifted people who are working to make this happen.



WHAT CAN YOU DO

1. Pray daily for this ministry. If God wills it... it will.
2. Donate - consider making a donation toward our goal - $25,000 by July.
3. Connect us with donors: let us know names of some people who would be interested in hearing about YL & potentially becoming YL donors.
4. Pray for our kids who are attending camp... that they would meet Jesus and come to really know & follow Him
5. Join the Committee - we are building a diverse committee representing many churches, leaders in the community, parents, teachers, etc. to lead & shepherd this ministry into a healthy future.
6. Become a "Friend of Young Life" - This team will be the first asked to take on special projects for Young Life (small and large).