Minute for Mission
Breakfast Club!
At Plymouth-Trinity United Church in Sherbrooke, QC, a Sunday morning breakfast is helping families connect with their church community, and creating opportunities for the congregation to build new partnerships in the neighbourhood. “Breakfast Club” started in January 2025 after Pastor Samuel Vauvert Dansokho and members of the congregation started thinking about how they could better support families who were often arriving late for worship. For families with several young children, getting everyone ready and out the door on a Sunday morning can be quite difficult. Rather than seeing that as a problem, the congregation decided to try something different by inviting everyone to come early for a free breakfast.
The first Breakfast Club welcomed more than 25 people, about half of them children. Attendance has since steadied at 10-15 people each Sunday. The program is intentional and straightforward. Breakfast might include cereal, toast, oatmeal, fruit, and baked goods. Sometimes even hot dogs! But beyond nourishment for the body, the program has also become an opportunity for people to spend time together and nourish their souls in community.
Our gifts through Mission and Service help the initiative sustain and grow, alongside significant contributions from the congregation and local partners. Community members have donated baked goods, fruit, and money, while a local international grocery store provides day-old bread. Any extras are sent home with community members. There are plans to consider opening the program more widely to the surrounding neighbourhood as capacity allows. For Shanna Bernier, who helped plan the initiative, the success of Breakfast Club is already clear. Families are being fed, food is being diverted from waste, a local business has become a partner, and people are spending time together at church.
“Generosity has been abundant, not only in the form of a grant but in baked goods and fruit prepared by community members, in financial donations, and in fundraising through a Shrove Tuesday Pancake supper. Pastor Samuel made a connection with a local international grocery store, securing an ongoing donation of “day-old” breads, which can be eaten at a Toast Bar. When there have been larger donations, loaves of bread are frozen and shared throughout the community.”
Our gifts to Mission and Service help congregations respond to the needs they see in their own communities. At Plymouth-Trinity United Church, that support has helped turn a practical idea into an ongoing ministry that brings families, volunteers, local businesses, and the wider community together.
Thank you.
Refugee Project
Nov 17, 2022
As we watch with disbelief a war waging in the Ukraine and over 600,000 being displaced in under one week fleeing the bombs, we appreciate the greater need that exists to welcome refugees. Our faith calls us to respond and through this ministry, we try to answer this call. Our Lenten Project for this year was our St. Paul’s Refugee Campaign, to raise funds for our work with refugees. As you know, we are working with St. Mark’s Anglican/Lutheran Church to sponsor a family from Syria who just last week arrived here in Canada. We are also working with a local Afghani family in co–sponsoring six members of their family who have fled Afghanistan and the have now arrived. With the invasion of Ukraine, we know that there are now many more refugees who have fled their homes and we have no idea if they will be able to safely return to their own country or not.
To donate to our Refugee fund, please make your cheque payable to St. Paul’s United Church and clearly mark on the memo line of the cheque that is for the Refugee Fund. If you are making an e–transfer or donation online through our website, then please indicate that it is for this fund. Thank you
Scott Warnock, Executive Director of the Huronia Community Foundation, presents a cheque for $2,000 to Ken Woods, of St. Paul’s Refugee Committee.
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St. Paul’s United Church in Midland is in the process of sponsoring a family from Afganistan, and is also assisting St. Mark’s Anglican – Lutheran church as they are sponsoring a family from Syria.
St. Paul’s has a long history of sponsoring refugees going back to the 70s with the sponsorship of a family fleeing Vietnam after the war.
All funds raised will be used to cover the costs of supporting the refugee families once they arrive in Canada, for the sponsorship period of 12 months.
Refugee Programs
We asked Rev Martin Giebel, from St. Mark’s, for an update on the Ismail and Maghrebi families which is included here.
The Ismail family (from Syria): all the children are in school, enjoying it and making progress both in English and academically. The father is employed. Regarding the son who is still in Germany, his application is now at the Vienna visa office – it’s progressing.
The Maghrebi family (from the Ukraine): everyone doing well. They are now in their own apartment.
The Maghrebi family are in touch with the Ismail family and Rev. Martin visits both regularly. The two mothers, Jihan and Svitlana, are forming a friendship even though both hardly speak any English – they ‘understand’ each other.
Everyone takes ESL lessons. Rev Martin is trying to establish in-person ESL in Midland.
We have a Travel Date for the family from Afghanistan; for now, it is for late October (no names and dates are included for their safety). We are making efforts to bring them to Canada as soon as possible as the situation where they are is very dangerous; we are very concerned.
We are all grateful for the safe arrival of all refugees; please pray for those who are still waiting to travel to Canada, and safety.
This family has arrived and more information will be forth coming.