MCBC Women's Ministry: Inspirational Day

Will start this report with our beautiful poster - - -
prepared by Dan Loewen - MCBC's Communications person.

And the picture on the right is a visual of our Inspirational Day Theme.

Beloved Before Time!

Psalm 139

A Heart for Love and an Hourglass for Time!

We started on Friday afternoon with all the set-up and decorating.

Each woman received the program booklet, the fall retreat registration,

Mennonite Women Canada "Pennies and Prayer Legacy Fund" brochure (purple on the right)

and a brochure for the ministry that our hosting church decided to support with

their quarter of the events offering - "Youth Unlimited".

On the left - tables are ready and waiting for the women.

On the right - the table that is waiting for the women to have some fun!

On the left: Ten Thousand Villages ready for the ladies.

On the right: information table for Mennonite Women Canada and

MCBC Women's Ministry.

After all the tables had a pretty floral centerpiece, these pretty roses

were still available and promptly became a raffle item!

In each of the pretty bags was one
of the scarves you see here.
We chose the pink & white, white & gold and
the white & black.
They were donated by one of our ladies
who wishes to stay anonymous!
We thank you very much!

No event is complete
without a few door prizes.

THEN.... just before 7:00 pm ....

...once all the setup was done...

I headed over to House of James for the book-launch of

Mennonite Girls Can Cook newest book "Celebrations".

I had previously arranged to pick up two autographed copies of the book,

1 for the Inspirational Day and 1 for the Fall Women's Retreat.

The books were ready and waiting for me when I got there and I was totally surprised when

I found out that MennoMedia had decided to donate the two copies to MCBC Women's Ministry.

Thank you, so much!

On stage are the folks from MennoMedia.

Sitting at the tables are the guests of honour - MGCC.

In the foreground, in the checkered shirt is

the owner of House of James - Lando Klassen.

Saturday morning arrived, bright and sunny, warm and gorgeous!

I got to the church a few minutes after 8:00 am to take care of a few last minute details

and when I walked past the kitchen, this is what I saw.

On the left: Elli Friesen and Hilda Krause baking fresh buns to go with our lunch!

The muffins were already baking in the ovens and the place was smelling wonderful.

On the right: Rudi Ketler and his daughter prepping our lunch menu.

Thank you so much for the time you gave to feed all of us!

And then... the cakes started to arrive!

One prettier that the other!

10 in total!

This was going to be fun!

A good old fashioned "Cake Walk"!

Tickets - $5.00 each that could be used either for the Cake Walk or

you could enter the ticket in the Book Raffle.

You could buy as many tickets as you wanted to

but each ticket could only be used once.

Money from the ticket sales was designated for

Women's Ministry operating budget.

Thank you so much to the 8 ladies that donated the fabulous cakes and

to all the women that bought tickets!

Fun was had and a few lucky ladies got to take home these yummy cakes!

Picture received from Bettina Gonzales.

Are they not gorgeous?

And so many varieties - - -

chocolate, vanilla, fruit filled, Napoleon cake and more!

We have already had requests to do this again next year!

Not to mention that this helps our budget, tremendously!

We are ever so grateful!

Picture received from Bettina Gonzales.
Perusing all the options!

And the program starts....

Welcoming all the ladies to our event is Rita Siebert -

Women's Ministry Committee Member from

Sherbrooke Mennonite Church in Vancouver.

She read a portion Psalm 139 - our theme for the day.

Below is our wonderful Women's Ministry Worship Team

from Living Hope Christian Fellowship in Surrey!

From left to right:
Carla Hordyk, Cheryl Heinrichs, Dorothy Friesen and Elly Federau

Taking care of a bit of Women's Ministry business!

Having some fun with the "Cake Walk" during our free time at lunch.

And these were the two books that the women could use their tickets for.

Mennonite Girls Can Cook "Celebrations"

won by Margaret Schroeder from Bethel Mennonite Church

and April Yamasaki's "Sacred Pauses"

won by Dale Barnett from Northview Community Church

Lunch time!

Picture received from Bettina Gonzales.

The main course was a typical Paraguayan dish called "Guisso",

A rice dish with either beef or chicken meat in it.

We had both options available to us.

We also had Caesar Salad and fresh baked buns.

followed by a nice piece of cheese cake.

Our bakers and cooks are on the right top corner of the picture above.

Lunch was followed by a floral demonstration by Dan Trayler owner of Homestead Nursery Land.

Once that was done we sat back and listened to our guest speaker Carole Smith-Wheaton. See her suitcase on the floor? It was full of heavy baggage to share with us. Full of names and labels that people may have called us; words that we sometimes use to describe ourselves – words that either lift us up or leave a scar but then she proceeded to explain how blessed we all are to be fully and completely “BELOVED” by our Father – Psalm 139.

Thank you so much for accepting our invitation to be our speaker, Carole. You did a wonderful job of it!

The Worship Team led us in singing just the right song to go with our theme. Some of us had already learned it at our 2012 Fall Women Retreat Weekend. And since we used the retreat theme for the Inspirational Day, we knew that we needed to use the song and the visuals one more time.