I first attended YFC rallies in Toronto on Saturday nights in the mid-60s. I was able to invite many friends from school to attend with me. That led to involvement in Campus Life Bible studies at my high school in Agincourt. I attended People’s Church and it hosted a YFC talent contest in the late 60s. I won for the folk singer division. Sunday night during the winter, a group of us would head up to the YFC Stouffville youth center after church and go skating before having our meeting. Don Ratcliff, who owned the center also had a radio program that aired on Sunday evenings, and I often sang for his program.

Truly YFC and my involvement in the activities available at the time gave me alternative things to do, from my friends, over the weekend. Many times my weekends were far more eventful than theirs, and they would ask to join me!

Fast forward to the late 90s when there was a school strike, a friend of our resigned from teaching to start up a YFC in North Perth. I was teaching Special Education at the time and he asked if I would sit on the steering committee. We got established (me as secretary of the committee) and I became the lead volunteer on Friday nights. I volunteered for 6 years and served on Southwestern Ontario’s committee before retiring from teaching and taking up my official role as secretary for YFC North Perth. While in the role of volunteer, my husband and I led YFC canoe trips into Algonquin Park’s wilderness. What great times we had with youth on those trips! That was 12 years ago, and I am still going strong, although turning 70 this year. Our young staff seem to keep me feeling young even though I feel like gramma at staff meetings!

It is indeed an honour and privilege to serve God in this manner as I carry out the planning of events and administrative details while freeing our staff up to carry out their ministry.