 Chocolate all round – but only in the name of
impacting the community! And helping a
family attend a conference about CHARGE syndrome.
The end of 2006 was fast approaching and still nothing
had been done to fulfil our mission set out at the beginning of the year –
multiply $100 and impact the community. Don’t think we hadn’t been praying for inspiration every time we met –
we had, but all things are in Gods time.
 In August, we were told about a young boy, Cameron,
with CHARGE syndrome. CHARGE syndrome?
you may be asking. This is a term used
to group a collection of medical abnormalities, and don’t worry, we hadn’t
heard of it before either. It’s rare, so
there isn’t much support available locally.
Cameron’s mother, wanted to attend a conference in Australia
for advice and support from CHARGE experts, carers and sufferers. The conference was in October and, as one of
our group has some connections in the travel industry from their days as a
travel agent, we thought it would be easy to get some cheap (or free)
deals. The blow came when we found out
that she had already paid for the trip on her credit card. This turned our objective from getting some
cheap deals to begging for cold hard cash.
The end of 2006 was fast approaching and still nothing
had been done to fulfil our mission set out at the beginning of the year –
multiply $100 and impact the community. Don’t think we hadn’t been praying for inspiration every time we met –
we had, but all things are in Gods time.
In August, we were told about a young boy, Cameron,
with CHARGE syndrome. CHARGE syndrome?
you may be asking. This is a term used
to group a collection of medical abnormalities, and don’t worry, we hadn’t
heard of it before either. It’s rare, so
there isn’t much support available locally.
Cameron’s mother, wanted to attend a conference in Australia
for advice and support from CHARGE experts, carers and sufferers. The conference was in October and, as one of
our group has some connections in the travel industry from their days as a
travel agent, we thought it would be easy to get some cheap (or free)
deals. The blow came when we found out
that she had already paid for the trip on her credit card. This turned our objective from getting some
cheap deals to begging for cold hard cash.
There were so many ideas put forward in order to raise
some money – we tried everything from selling used batteries on trade-me, to
asking businesses for sponsorship, but it all came to a dead end.
Then we came up with the idea to sell chocolate! And did we sell chocolate! Although, to be fair, chocolate pretty much
sells itself. We had Cadbury boxes all
over the place. And if you are
wondering, I think Claire won the “most bars of chocolate sold” competition,
closely followed by Kristy. (We haven’t
organised a prize yet but I think a bar of chocolate might be a nice
touch.) However, the conference was long
finished by the time all the chocolate was sold.
Once all the counting was done (and chocolate eaten)
we presented Cameron’s mum with a cheque for $1000 at the Christmas Eve
service.
The tears in her eyes as she received the money made
us feel that it was all worth while, and God really did have his hand on the
project, because we really did have to take a rather unorthodox approach to
completing our mission.
To all those people who helped us out by either
buying/eating or selling chocolate, many thanks. We couldn’t have eaten it all by ourselves
(probably), and we certainly couldn’t have exercised enough to burn it all off
if we had (definitely), so thanks again.
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