United Church of Christ
Stillspeaking Magazine
For members of the Renault family, commitment to hockey runs deeper than the snows of the past winter. Or, in their case, the waters of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
It was a big deal when 11-year-old Levi’s team in St. Pete Beach, Fla., won a state championship in February. But as victories paved the way for that title, he and his older brothers also were staging a stirring rally on behalf of their church, Pass-A-Grille (Fla.) Community UCC.
Ironically, it started when hockey and Sunday school went head-to-head on the family calendar.
“They played hockey a couple times on Sunday mornings, so we had to go to the second church service, at 11 a.m.,” says the boys’ father, Stephen, noting that Sunday school is held only during the 9 a.m. service.
On those occasions, the boys — Caleb (14), Joshua (12) and Levi — joined their father and mother, Lisa Dower, in the pews. “Pastor Keith (Haemmelmann) was talking about the budget one day, and then a few others got up and spoke about it,” recalls Stephen. “The kids were shocked to realize how much money we needed to pay for everything.”
From ministerial salaries and mission trips to cooling and keeping up the church building, fiscal responsibility hit the boys like a slap shot off the glass.
“It was a little more Josh’s work,” says Caleb of the brothers’ plan to help. “We wrote out something that we thought was appropriate for the church, and then we told them about it.” All three boys — on two separate occasions — presented the congregation with a carefully outlined plan. The upshot: The boys would sell maple syrup they had produced in Canada. Fifty percent of the sales would go to the church.
“We had people lined up out the door the next day to buy syrup,” says Caleb.
Between syrup purchases and outside donations, the goal of $500 for the church was shattered more than six-fold. Within three weeks, they’d raised $3,075.
“I expected the total to be $1,000 or something,” says Levi. “I didn’t expect it to be that much.”
“From ministerial salaries and mission trips to cooling and keeping up the church building, fiscal responsibility hit the boys like a slap shot off the glass.”
Life in Florida and Canada
The family, which maintains Canadian citizenship, spends its winters in Florida. The boys are homeschooled.
In school, kids aren’t taught “anything about relationships and money,” says Stephen. “I wanted them to be able to start their own business and keep their own books; make a little money, but then have to spend a little bit of money to keep going.”
“We spend as much time as we can at our home in Florida. Caleb and Levi play hockey, Josh plays basketball, and I coach baseball,” he says. “We’re kind of entrenched in the neighborhood here. And the church was one of our biggest pulls.”
The family’s Canadian hometown is Pentatanguishene (pen-tuh-TANG-woosh-een), Ontario, an hour and a half north of Toronto on the Georgian Bay. And if the Renault boys’ generosity shines in Florida, their dedication is on fire in Canada.
The family affair of maple syrup production early in the spring includes setting out on snowmobiles and distributing/attaching 350 sap buckets to maple trees. Once sap is collected, the real time-consuming work begins.
“It can take up to 20 hours of boiling to get from sap to syrup,” says Lisa. “You never know the exact moment when it’s going to reach the perfect stage. When it’s time, we all need to be there to lift the stove, filter it twice and pour our liquid gold into bottles.”
Sometimes “the time” is in the middle of the night. In those cases, Stephen summons his sons from slumber.
They don’t mind.
“We try to get a little sleep before it gets close,” says Josh. “Then someone has to be watching it and adding the firewood. Once it gets close, my dad will wake us up and maybe sit for an hour and test it every 10 minutes.”
The boys play more than a waiting game here. “Sometimes we’ll stay up and watch it the whole night and play euchre or cribbage,” says Levi.
The Rev. Victoria Long, associate pastor at Pass-A-Grille Community UCC and leader of the middle school youth group, the Riptides, of which Caleb and Josh are a part, speaks of the brothers in awe.
“They have a strong sense of the divine and a grand commitment to making the world a better place,” she says. “I can’t imagine what they’re going to be like when they’re 30.”