Local church donates to the food bank after successful fundraiser

MERRITT – The Nicola Valley Evangelical Free Church held a fundraiser event in March and were able to share the rewards with the Nicola Valley Food Bank.

The youth of the church raised a total of $4,085 for the food bank which they went and purchased groceries to donate.

“It’s really cool to able to show God’s love to this food bank and give the kids something they can grasp onto and they did super awesome,” said Josh Dekker, Pastor at the Nicola Valley Evangelical Free Church. “It’s sweet to be able to donate to help people out. Just to see something tangible now is cool.”

There was roughly 15 youth dropping off the food to the food bank, all with smiles and sharing their excitement to help.

“It means a lot because God says to help the needy and the poor and giving back to the food bank, half of what we made at the circle sit in, is an awesome experience,” said Timothy Scholtens. “There’s always been hard times among families, there’s been times where you don’t have enough money to buy food and stuff like that and we just love to help get them through this rough patch.”

In March, the youth put on an event where they sat in a circle, and were not allowed to leave for 63 hours. During the circle sit in, the participants would collect pledges as the fundraiser.

Dekker said he is so proud of the kids for participating in the event and then following through with the donations.

“They are very eager all the time to do anything and everything so really thankful they took on the fundraiser back in March. They just rally around really anything you give them and it’s something they have talked about for a couple of months now to kind of put an end cap on it is really cool.”