Q & A about The Beacon

Wednesday 23 April 2014

Things are cooking...

New Volunteers & New Hours
The Beacon Youth Centre is proud to welcome two new volunteers, husband and wife Chuck and Joan.  We can now open an extra day and have chosen Wednesday as a good choice for the kids to come at lunch.   The result is we are open Tuesday to Friday 11:00 to 1:00 and Tuesdays & Thursdays from 7 - 9 PM.  Joan is a retired teacher and Chuck retired from the RCMP.
Do we see a pattern here?  God is giving us lots of retired cops and teachers... Makes me wonder what is coming around the corner...

Joan is one of our newest volunteers
Cooking classes!  Our night-time crowd at the Beacon is getting a special bonus as Pat Stuckless of the HKPRD Health Unit is teaching cooking classes several evenings this month. Pat brings lots of expertise on kitchen sanitation and clean food preparation, menu planning, healthy food choices and basic culinary skills. She's great with a knife too.  She has all the utensils, machines, openers, cutting boards, bowls, dishes, lids, spices and basic ingredients to make a healthy and tasty meal.

Pat shows how to prepare the pizza dough
The first evening featured pizza, and Pat made sure the kids mixed and rolled out their own dough, and even put cheese under the edge of the crust. Yum!  The kids cut piles of healthy stuff and mixed the sauce and spices, cut the cheese (so, who cut the cheese?) and spread everything out. Several kinds of meat, anchovies, and even black olives added variety.    Someone even got a few pieces of pineapple put onto their section of the pizza.

The second night session was on snack foods such as tortilla chips and dips, nacho ingredients and fruit salad. Two of the boys made a fancy bowl from a whole watermelon and most of it stayed together... Lentils and beans made up the protein portions, but some individuals insisted they wanted meat.
After the tortillas and salads we had flavoured popcorn.
Lots of good stuff.




Count on Blacksmith Rick to bring us some portable hands-on steel smithy work in weeks to come, as a follow up to the practical cooking classes we are seeing happen here.  Rick can put a forge and some useful tools on a trailer and bring them to our parking lot for some of our evening teens to hammer on. 
I don't know what we'll be making, but I know it will be interesting.
Joan, Rick and Frances... cooking   

Bike for The Beacon
Plans are underway for the first annual Bike For the Beacon motorcycle rally.  Yours truly still needs to get permission from the municipal council to have the parking lot filled with noisy bikes, the air filled with smoke and Bar B Q aroma, and the airwaves filled with the dulcet strains of amped-up rock music from some local able musicians.  Hey! We will even sell T shirts. Yeah!
My son Dan has designed several versions of the design below, which will be printed in white on black T-shirts.

Pre-order a shirt from me
The Bike For Beacon  Ride For Youth will take place on Saturday May 31st (God willing & if we get permission)  at 9:00 (registration) at the Beacon parking lot. Return for Bar B Q will be around 3:00 PM 
$20 for riders $10 for those riding pillion.
The ride will be all over the beautiful twisty and hilly roads of the Northumberland Hills and will return at 3:00 PM.

Rain Date will be June 7th.  

Mark your calendars and shine up the bikes!

Monday 7 April 2014

In everything give thanks...

We had quite a crowd at The Beacon  last Thursday as the youth group from Fellowship C.R. Church came to drop in and visit.  Many had never been in there before and were surprised. Our regulars were surprised too.

We didn't have quite as many as the crowd shown here, but, well,  it seemed like it.
I substitute this for the photos I did not take with my own camera, which was in my pocket, ready and charged for the occasion.  Old age...

GOOD NEWS!  The Council for the Municipality of Brighton has given us the grant money we asked for many months ago:  $2 500. That is very good and will help pay our rent for almost three months, or it will allow 79 days of The Beacon to be open for youth to come and hang out in a friendly spot.


AND MORE... local churches had a series of ecumenical services for the Lenten season.  Each service was followed by a lunch and the cash donations from each were divided and sent to us at The Beacon and the New Life Girls' Home in Consecon.  The New Life Girls Home has been an important spiritual anchor in the area, helping girls who have had troubled pasts make a new start.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS
The Beacon's Ride For Youth will take place May 31st, 2014 and all bikers are welcome.  Registration will be from 09:00 to 10:00 with kickstands up starting at 10:15.  Count on Ride Marshall Rick to show everyone a good route through the country.  All proceeds will go to support The Beacon Youth Centre.
Riders will pay $20.00 and passengers $10.00. Rain Date will be June 7th.

NEW POOL TABLE  We were given an 8 foot pool table by Mike Wright of Trenton, who answered an ad Rick posted. Mike had this large and well-maintained table in his upstairs room and decided to donate it to us.  Many thanks. It's become our most popular table.
The new/old table is in foreground


The Men's Pool Night has been earning some extra cash most Friday nights. Many thanks for those who come out and an invitation to any and all adults who want to attend, 7-9 PM Friday nights.  Come as you are, pay and play. Suggested minimum $5 per player, but more generous amounts are always welcome.

CHESS is fast becoming a game of choice among our teens.  Some of them already show a surprising ability.

WE GIVE THANKS God has been good to us, moving in the hearts of too many people to list and remember here.  We write thank you letters, but some gifts are anonymous and they prefer it to be that way.  God bless you!