Year report and results Weissensee

Traveling Light ice skating team on the Weissensee

The 200 km marathon ice skating tour on the Weissensee in Austria is behind us. We are still waiting for an detailed report from our skating team, but we can already sharethe results:

• Krijn Donk finished in a time of 7:41; not enough to break a personal record, but still an amazing performance, putting him within the top 50 of more than a thousand participants.
• Henk Swijnenburg finished in a time of 11:19. He has shown incredible endurance and perseverance. We are proud of his performance even though he has not been able to break his personal record.
• Henk Vlot started out well, but unfortunately he had to step out of the race after about 75 km. He broke his hand when he fell on the ice. Pretty disappointing for him, as he was doing so well. But, let's hope and pray he can show off his skills some other time.

keep going

If you promised to sponsor our team, please send your donation to St. Traveling Light, Papendrecht, IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275, BIC: RABONL2U stating: WEISSENSEE. We will post a more extensive report and the final results for the expansion of the Teen Challenge men's rehabilitation home in Moldova on this blog.

What we also have to post publicly as a non-profit, is our annual financial report.

Our treasurer Martin deHaas takes care of this every year. A short report can be found on our website. We have also created an infographic for your convenience; a small card showing our activities and results at a glance.

The amount of money we can give away is important, of course. But we never want it to be, or become, our focus. We have a 💗 for mission, for nations and people and for outreach. Everyone who supports us in any form: THANK YOU! Without your help it is not possible.

Update Weissensee fundraiser for TC Moldova

As we wrote earlier, the Weissensee fundraiser 2019 for the expansion of the Teen Challenge men's home in Moldova is in full swing.

Our ice skating team will leave for Austria this weekend and skate the 200 km long tour on Tuesday January 29th!

A lot of pledges have come in and many donations have already been made.

It is great to receive such nice responses from everyone!

Several local newspapers published favorable articles about the fundraiser, for which we are thankful. We have made a simple chart of the pledges so far ... and the thermometer is still increasing, daily 😀

Next Tuesday you can follow the performances of our skaters Krijn Donk, Henk Swijnenburg and Henk Vlot LIVE via this link: http://live.ultimate.dk/uploads/2019/iceskating/weissensee/ and then choose the 3rd alternative Elfstedentocht. You can enter our guys as your favorites and follow them all day.

Pledges have been made for starting the tour, for finishing and for breaking personal records.  The current personal records are as follows:

Krijn Donk: 7:21

Henk Swijnenburg: 9:18:59

Henk Vlot: 10:57:53

👉 You can still sponsor our skating team by sending a direct donation to St. Traveling Light, Papendrecht, IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275, BIC: RABONL2U stating: WEISSENSEE or by making a pledge via krijncora@kpnmail.com.

The entire proceeds will go towards Teen Challenge Moldova!

Project industrial workshop CIC Mission, Georgia

New shed at the farm

Our Weissensee fundraiser is in full swing, the pledges are coming in fast. You can still participate!

So, we have some time to share a new project.

Early last year we visited the Bible school and farm of CICMission (check out the website!) in Georgia. We then helped them with fundraising for the growing, harvesting and packaging of garlic. A practical project that literally yielded a great harvest.

Welding works

The Bible school is full with (new) believers from countries like Iran and Azerbaijan and there are already plans to build a new dormitory. We have an open invitation to come and teach some lessons in the school ...

The farm offers employment for the students and the people in the area and generates some income to run the school. Everyone is working hard and the villagers are seeing that too!

Reza N. (founder of CIC Mission) recently emailed us with a request for financial support for the construction of an industrial workshop at the farm.

A shop where students can learn to weld and do ironwork and repairs. The villagers could join for some technical lessons as well. A nice way to generate income and to grow goodwill in the village.

Harvesting time at the farm

The motto of CICMission fits perfectly with that of Traveling Light: Go, and make disciples of all nations.

We are grateful to see the beautiful work that is being done in that region by a group of passionate people with a 💗 for their land and village.

You can (indirectly) help to fulfill the great commission in that area by supporting this practical 'project workshop'. You can send your gift to IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275 BIC: RABONL2U St. Traveling Light in Papendrecht. Make sure to mention CIC MISSION.

Weissensee 2019 for Teen Challenge Moldova

From left to right: Henk Vlot, Henk Swijnenburg, Krijn Donk

January is always an exciting month for Traveling Light, because we have our largest fundraising campaign of the year! On Tuesday January 29th the Traveling Light skating team will be ice skating on the Weissensee in Austria.

Our ice speed skating team has been in training for the 200 km tour for months. From October on, the men train a number of times a week on the ice skating rink in Breda.

This year Krijn Donk (Papendrecht), Henk Swijnenburg (Bleskensgraaf), Henk Vlot (Oud Alblas) and Adrie Swijnenburg (support & care) want to raise money for a great building project: the expansion of the Teen Challenge men's house in Falesti, Moldova.

The farm in Falesti (which we visited recently, namely this last October) is a Christian rehab home for men with addictions and other life-threatening problems. They can live there, work with their hands and above all have an encounter with the living God and start a new life!

We have encouraged them in the past with donations for the purchase of a dairy cow, the construction of a dairy kitchen and with personal visits.

This type of Christian help usually depends largely on donations. The program in Falesti is pretty self-sufficient though. They grow their own vegetables and keep animals.

Teen Challenge men's home in Falesti

In the picture you see another house in the background, that is a rehab house for women. Moldova is struggling with large numbers of alcohol and drug addicts and there is an urgent need to expand the number of beds.

The intention is to build a second floor on the existing house. The men in the program will do as much of the construction as they can, with the help of a team of men from Teen Challenge Czech Republic 💪

For the men in the Czech Republic program (who often have a background in construction work) it will be a great mission project ... going on a trip to help others! How beautiful is that? Helping hands extended, it will be a wonderful joint effort.

dorm room

We are expecting a great response to our Weissensee fundraiser. The full amount of donations coming in will benefit Teen Challenge Falesti.

You can sponsor Krijn, Henk and Henk as a team or individually:

• with a donation per kilometer,
• with a donation to finish,
• with a general donation, or
• with a donation according to your own idea (for example for breaking a pr or last year's time result)

If you decide to participate, please send an e-mail with your pledge and encouraging words to krijncora@kpnmail.nl.

With the Teen Challenge team at the Falesti church

Of course you can send a direct donation to St. Traveling Light, Papendrecht, IBAN: NL91RABO0118582275, BIC: RABONL2U.

May records be broken in every possible way!

We look forward to your heart-warming reactions and we wish the ice skating team lots of success and likewise perseverance.