Skip The Dinner is CareImpact’s year-end Christmas campaign, a fundraising non-event. You keep your time, and you give from wherever you are.
Right now, every year-end gift or pledge is DOUBLED by a generous donor, so your giving goes twice as far to help strengthen CareImpact’s work with churches and community partners across Canada.
What happens when a grieving mother, recently arrived from Ghana, finds herself isolated after the tragic loss of her son? Hear this story of a local church stepping up to provide not only material support but also emotional and spiritual connection to a family in desperate need.
Through the CarePortal platform, a simple request for an Uber gift card turned into a heartfelt mission of compassion and community. Listeners will hear how this church went above and beyond to offer genuine care, showing up to provide meals, counselling, and ongoing support, transforming a story of isolation into one of belonging and hope.
DONATE! Help connect and equip more churches across Canada to effectively journey well in community with the most vulnerable: careimpact.ca/donate
Mentioned in this episode:
Skip The Dinner-Double Your Impact
Skip The Dinner is CareImpact’s year-end Christmas campaign, a fundraising non-event. You keep your time, and you give from wherever you are.
Right now, every year-end gift or pledge is DOUBLED by a generous donor, so your giving goes twice as far to help strengthen CareImpact’s work with churches and community partners across Canada.
Each donation will be matched before January 1, 2026.
Transcripts
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This is Journey with Care. Hey. We're taking 4 weeks of the summer
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to keep it short or speedy. Let's just call these
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summer speedos. Short action packed dives into the
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incredible stories of everyday people using Care Portal to
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build connection and change lives. Care Portal, for those
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that haven't heard, is an amazing platform connecting churches,
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families, and businesses with specific needs with some of the most
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vulnerable in our communities. So as you soak up the sun this
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summer and enjoy these summer Speedos, remember, Journey with
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Care is powered by Care Impact, a Canadian charity helping
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strangers become good neighbours. To keep bringing you our podcast and these
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stories, we rely on supporters like you. So for
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the summer Speedo series, join our summer of 30.
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We're looking for 30 amazing listeners to donate $30 in
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the next 30 days. Every dollar helps us maintain our
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equipment, update our software, and help us cover all the
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expenses associated with bringing you these important stories.
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So to join the summer 30, check the show notes for the link or visit
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journey with care dot ca slash 30. That's journey with care
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dot ca slash 30. So go ahead,
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pause it, and become 1 of the 30 right now. Alright.
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Enough chit chat. Let's get on with the summer Speedos.
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I think keeping in the forefront of our mind, we're sending the churches on
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mission over and over again, right into, into hard places.
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A need came in and the need says, this mom
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lost her 7 year old child last week to drowning.
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She wants to get connected to a local grief counseling program, but she
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doesn't drive. And so an Uber gift card will ease this
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financial burden of transportation and allow her to get the services that she
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needs as she greets her child.
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And so a local church picked this up, and
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they acknowledged we could send her a gift card through
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email. We could send that gift card through the case
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worker, but we would really, really love
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And so, they showed up to her home. They really expected
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to give this to her and go. But when
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they came to the front door, she kind of launched
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herself into their arms and wouldn't really let go.
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It had been 6 days since she lost her 6 year
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old son. They lived in an apartment complex. He had,
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pretty severe autism, and they had walks
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in place and all of these extra measures,
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in place to keep him safe. And he still got
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out, and he still drowned.
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She hadn't had the ability to process that really with anyone.
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She ended up in child welfare and in prevention due to the
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investigation of all of that. She and her
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family are from Ghana, and so they recently relocated
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here, and so she doesn't drive. Her
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husband left almost as soon as they got here, and so she's pretty
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isolated.
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She has no real way of supporting her family. She has a 15
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and a 7 year old still at home, and they're struggling
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to then grieve this loss that happened as soon as they got here.
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And so, for the church to go in
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and offer her not only this gift card, but this
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place to to process. They stayed there for hours.
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She showed them pictures of her baby. She was able
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to talk with them, and then they they told her,
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we'll be back. Like, how how soon can we be back?
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And they were able to tell her, this is not punishment
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here with you, and we'll be back. And so, how are you gonna feed your
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kids this week? We'll be back with food. Do you need groceries? We'll be back
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with groceries. How do you who is your support? We're your support because
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you are so marginalized here and you are so
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isolated here, and we're your people now.
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And so, you know, a a few actually reached out to me because
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here's I wanna quickly read what the church responder left
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as the the feedback. He says, this child
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drowned on Wednesday. This was the saddest and heaviest
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care portal need I've ever been involved with. When we entered the apartment,
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we introduced ourselves and mom immediately embraced the lady who came with me
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and began to cry. They had never met and yet 1 mother was comforting another
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mother and sympathizing with the indescribable pain that goes with the
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She took She took out her phone and showed us pictures of her
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beautiful 7 year old boy. It's heartbreaking, really. We
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talked a while and told her God sees her and has not forgotten
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her. We told her about our church and that she was
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not alone. We asked to pray for her and she called her other boys out
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and the 5 of us stood, held hands, and prayed together.
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This family is from Africa and she seems so alone and isolated. I
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hope and pray she knows she's not alone. I hope and pray we can be
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there for them moving forward.
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So the the follow-up here is that this past
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Sunday, these
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blessed to go. They had strategically placed people to greet
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them as they went in the door and the responder kinda said the church
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doesn't always get it right, but on Sunday, they nailed it. They felt
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welcomed and embraced. They went out to lunch afterwards.
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They have plans moving forward, like the 15 15 year old needs to learn how
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to drive. He just got his permit, so they have people in place to teach
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him how to drive. They have people in place to get groceries moving forward. They
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have people in place to walk through counseling, and they have her counseling
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covered. And so the idea of everyone
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just just getting it right on such a heavy 1,
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Right? That this family went from isolation
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to support through a church saying yes and connected
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by Care Portal. And her
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investigation is closed out, her prevention case is
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closed out, and the church really has got it from
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here.
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Thanks for listening to this summer Speedo on the Journey with Care podcast.
