To our New Life Family,

For the past two Sunday’s, May 6th and 13th, we brought a need before our church community. In specific, we asked you to give to our Summer Outreach program.

In the past, this program has been funded by the Canada Summer Jobs program, a grant given by our Federal Government to help hire students for the summer months. We would apply to this program each year and usually be awarded enough funding to hire two interns. These interns, would then, become a critical part of our Summer Outreach program, helping to staff and facilitate all of the various activities.

This past year the Federal Government made some major changes in the application and approval process for this program. In short, we were required to attest to some things in the application form that presented a major moral dilemma for us. These things included us agreeing to support abortions, among other things. Because we could not attest to these issues, our application was denied, leaving us (and approximately 1500 other organizations across our country) without funding to hire our interns.

We made our initial appeal for support to our New Life family on May 6th. Then after one week, we closed out our appeal with one final reminder. Our goal was to raise $8000.

We are happy to report that your response far exceeded our expectations, putting us well above our goal. In the end, you gave a total of $14,150 towards our Summer Outreach Program. In addition, we applied for, and were awarded an extra $2000 from another program unrelated to the Federal Government grant, giving us a total of $16,150 to work with this summer.

We thank you for responding so beautifully to this need. Your response has not only given us the necessary funding to reach out to our community kids this summer, it has also given us the flexibility to do certain things that would have been restricted in the Federal Government program that we worked with in the past. We are now in process of firming up our plans and putting out job postings for our summer intern positions.

We ask that you would pray for our Summer Outreach. We are stepping out of our comfort zone, and reaching into places that we have not gone in years. Together, we believe that our Summer Outreach will bring much fruit into the Kingdom.

For Christ and His Church,

Mike VanderKwaak

Executive Pastor, New Life Church