While most tweens fill their free time with video games, TV, and hanging out with friends, 12-year-old Rhea Peters is in her family’s kitchen baking up a storm. For a little more than a month, Peters has dedicated every spare moment whipping up cookies and muffins by the hundreds. Behind her commitment to such a massive culinary undertaking is a desire to help kids in another part of the world go to summer camp.
When missionaries Scott and Patsy Buhler visited Peters’ church this past summer, they put out a call to the congregation for financial help. The Buhlers, who have served for the past 18 years in Brazil, have dedicated their lives to camp ministries. Their dream is to build a camp lodge that will belong to Quest Brazil, the ministry they serve. For the past eight years they’ve been renting space for their year-round camps.
“My dad went to Brazil in April to help with the first phase of the project,” says Peters. “A couple months later, Scott and Patsy came to Canada. While they were here, they were talking about ways we can help support the project and the idea came to me.”
Convinced she could help, if only in a small way, Peters solicited her parents’ approval to advertise and sell baked goods and donate the proceeds.
“It’s just what I do,” says Peters with the confidence of a young entrepreneur. “I have a company named Sweet Tooth Baking and have baked for a lot of people in the last two years. It is really something I love to do. I wanted to support Quest Brazil because there are not that many camps in Brazil that give opportunities for kids to learn about Jesus, and here in Canada we have more opportunities to go to camp.”
Peters created an advertisement and used social media to get the word out. Immediately, orders started coming in. “My goal at the beginning was [to raise] $500. In about two weeks, I had already accomplished that one and orders were still flying in so we just kept going. Right now we have $1,150.”
As if taking on such a lofty task wasn’t enough, Peters also plays ringette and volleyball, attends youth group, sits on student council at the Niverville Collegiate, and babysits on the side. This past summer, Peters and a friend ran a day camp for nine children under the age of seven. They organized, advertised, and supervised the entire week of activities for seven and a half hours per day.
When asked what she’d say to others who are unsure how to help people in need, Peters says, “I would tell them to find a way to use their hobbies [and] passions helping others.”
As for her own hobbies, Peters may have found her future calling.
“I definitely would love to be a full-time baker, but even if I’m not it will be one of my greatest passions.”
