The Challenge by Christine Fredlov

Dear Family and Friends,
Today we returned from our home church, The Crossing, faced with a challenge!! The Crossing is celebrating it's 20yr anniversary of becoming a church and they are looking at ways to reach out and give back even MORE to the community!! So today our Pastor Tim Celek challenged us to help him reach this goal. The Crossing distributed $20,000 in cash ($20, $50 and $100 bills) to each family attending services this weekend. Each family that accepted this challenge was to open the "sealed" envelope after church services to find out what amount we had been given to start our challenge with! Well, the Fredlovs received $20 with the challenge to make it grow to 5x the amount ($100) and then decide on a non-profit organization that we would like to GIVE!!! SO we are matching that $20 ourselves and Cassi is taking her recycling this week and donating all of what she makes to this challenge. We are offering family and close friends the opportunity to help us reach and even exceed our goal!! I mentioned that we are to chose a non-profit organization that we feel could benefit from this challenge and their are SOOOO many of them it was hard to chose. I was reading the Sunday paper when I saw an ad for an organization called CASA - Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children, after reading about their services and what their goals are as an organization, we chose that this will be the non-profit that we will support with this challenge. You can read more about what CASA does by visiting their web site @ www.casaoc.org and see how this amazing organization reaches out to help less fortunate children in the communities surrounding us. I think those of us that have children realize how blessed we are in the families and friends that we have...what we need to remember is not all children are as fortunate as ours. This is our way to help!!

Blessings,
Christine, Jan, Adam & Cassi Mae