Author Archives: Susan

Just a Few Friends… Ladies’ Lunch & Food Drive

Her signature line says it all! A few years back Gayle Rice and a few friends decided to make their lunch together count for more than a couple of hours of chit chat. So they decided to incorporate an annual food drive into their regular social gathering. It started with just four or five ladies. Today over five dozens ladies gathered at the Pavilion for a scrumptious lunch, each bringing a donation of food to fill our pantry shelves.

So what is the motto Gayle uses to sign off her emails?

Be the kind of woman the Devil shouts about as you jump out of bed in the morning…..”Oh, S___, she’s up”!!

I think she certainly lived up to it today!

When April Showers….. by Susan Young

April may not have brought rain to San Felipe but it did bring showers of good will for the people of San Felipe. Interact teens from Sonora California joined the Interact youth of San Felipe for two days of community outreach. On the first day, April 2nd, the teens broke up into four groups, shopped for fresh fruits and vegetables and went out with volunteers from the Better Together in Christ group and VSL and delivered a bountiful bag of produce personally to the homes of the elderly and children with disabilities. The next day, the teens and their chaperons returned to VSL to spend the morning painting the outside of the thrift store. It was was a Huck Finn kind of day and many willing hands made short work of an otherwise tedious job and resulting in a fresh new look for the food bank and thrift store.

As people get ready to leave, many have asked how they could best help the work of Volunteers Without Limits while they are gone. The easiest and most helpful thing you can do is to sign up for a regular monthly donation on our web site. Food distribution continues on through the summer months and water delivery becomes even more critical during these months of soaring temps. By the same token, sales in the thrift shop goes way down as our winter population dwindles. A regular monthly contribution of $10, $20 or more would help assure that our food bins don’t run empty between now and September.
Another tradition for many as they prepare to head north is to clean out the pantry and drop off any items that will not store well through the summer months. We will add these food items to our regular food distributions to the people of San Felipe. We have drop stations at San Felipe Storage behind the Roadrunner Cafe and Carole’s One of a Kind Fashion or Linda’s People’s Gallery in town.
Another way you can help is by setting up a recycle box in your home town to collect empty printer cartridges for the VSL recycling program. You can either wait and bring the cartridges with you when you return in the fall or send me an email (vsl.vwl@gmail.com) with your address and I’ll send you addressed and prepaid shipping labels for you to send the cartridges directly to the recycling center. These cartridges will bring $.50/ea (some more) to VSL for the purchase of food or the children’s special needs. You might even want to start you own recycling project with your club or group. There is some work involved as the cartridges have to be sorted and packaged according to the recyclers specifications. It is much easier to just bag them and drop them off at SunRunner or Yet Mail and leave the processing to the gals at VSL for a double blessing: first you will not be filling the landfills with waste and contaminants and second you will be supporting VSL’s food bank and aide to children with disabilities. Let me know if you need graphics or print material for displays.
Now to all our traveling friends, we pray for your journey to be safe and your return speedy. Looking forward to seeing you all next Fall.

February Wrap Up at Volunteers Without Limits

It was a good thing that we had an extra day last month because I don’t think we could have crammed everything into just 28 days! Chuck & I were out of town for the first couple of weeks, attending a family wedding in Texas but in our absence life went on as usual for Volunteers Sin Limites. The ladies of VSL distributed food to over a hundred families and my brother Larry joined Augustine on the biweekly deliveries to the elderly and disabled.

Patricia was also contacted by Kuchy and the San Felipe Rotary and helped arrange for Flor to receive one of the two dozen new wheelchairs they were giving away.

The month ended with a bang up benefit dinner prepared by Cesar at the Pavilion. Simply Baja was filled with good food (La Cava de Marcelo), delightful entertainment (flamenco dancers from ZONA TANGO Dance Academy in Mexicali) and good spirits (tequila & wine from local vendors), topped off with delectable morsels from Baja Chocolates.

The evening included a silent auction and 50/50 Raffle and netted a little over $1500 for the food bank and children’s aid and about $65 from the raffle which was given to Casa de Fe children’s home with our deepest sympathies to Bill and the children for the loss of his wife and their benefactor, Carol Spradlin.

Our sincere thanks to our generous sponsors & donors
and to those who made this event a reality