Powderpuff Football

Ambassadors for Mobility: Converge Church’s Women’s Football Team

Location: Fountain Valley, CA

Background: “We love what Free Wheelchair Mission stands for. To be able to give the gift of mobility to those who are the poorest, the least and the forgotten in this world is amazing. The ladies of the Converge football team decided that Free Wheelchair Mission was what we wanted to play for. This is the second year we have adopted FWM as our charity. We want to help raise awareness that over 100 million people in this world cannot walk, needing a simple wheelchair to be able to simply function in life. We decided to fight for these people on the playing field by using the fellowship of competition as a means to raise money for a valuable cause!” 

The Story: “The 4th Annual SoCal Charity Bowl is an annual women’s 7-7 flag football tournament that has teams from churches all over Southern California. Each church gets to play for their charity of choice, and the winner of the tournament gets a purse prize of $500. Every church is also encouraged to do their own fundraising on the side and create awareness for their local or global cause. In the end, all teams win!! What makes this tournament different from the others is that the focus is bringing awareness and funds to the represented charities.

The Converge Family Church girls football team took to the field on Saturday, 11/21, going 3-0 into the Final game. We were pumped and ready to take the championship title for the second year in a row. Unfortunately our team didn’t have enough energy to bounce back and win it in the championship title match. We lost, but still had fun knowing that we’re still winners as we raised the most amount of money out of all the charities represented – our fundraising total was higher than all the other teams combined!” 

Lives Transformed by the 2011 Converge Team: 57

Coaches and players from left to right: Eric Lee, Connie Aboubakare, Stephanie Velarde, Christina Pao, Stephanie Hong, Angela Lee,

Bao Le, Amy Lee, Jennifer Pham, Sandy Ng, Marlene Luu, Kristel Bedford, Pam Grenas, Sabrina Nguyen, Pam Grenas and Hieu Nguyen.

 

Model Airplanes

Ambassador for Mobility: Ed McGugan

Location: Kincardine, Ontario Canada (on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, Michigan)

Background: Ed first discovered Free Wheelchair Mission in winter 2010 when he was helping to design a wheelchair for a missionary friend. After researching different chair designs, he ran across the Free Wheelchair Mission website and it “really shook me to the core.” Whenever Ed showed anyone the video they all seemed to think it was a good thing but didn’t know how to get involved.

The Story: Ed and his wife searched for ways to get involved with FWM. They decided to bring the mission into their church through their Sunday school program. Recently Ed, his wife, and the children of the Chalmers Community Church Sunday School hosted a day of engineering for a cause. The group got together to sell model airplane kits to raise money for Free Wheelchair Mission. “There were boys chasing the airplanes all over the arena that day and we seemed to get a great audience, but we only sold three kits. I was feeling very disappointed. However, people started handing us money directly for Free Wheelchair Mission! We were kind of shocked how this has just taken off. Although we still have lots of airplane kits left over, I'm convinced the people are more gratified by transforming lives with wheelchairs instead!” Ed plans to continue his efforts through his projects, the Sunday school group, and by utilizing FWM’s annual Christmas gift card program.

Lives Transformed to Date: 35 and counting (his original donation was doubled due to our Match Campaign)

“This young fella is Luke McBride who is 9 years old. He was the airplane pilot extraordinaire that day. His Dad, George (with the hat) was a big help in making this work.”