"My first involvement with Hands at Work began with a short term team in 2014. My son, Devon, had left home a few months prior to this trip to serve for one year with Hands at Work. My wife and I thought it was important to see what he was doing as he was already talking about staying on for longer than a year. My wife Kathleen and I travelled to Zambia and South Africa with another son and a niece. For three weeks, we visited multiple communities, seeing first-hand the work going on in these countries. It was in the community of Mulenga that I believe God captured my heart to get involved. I didn't know it at the time, but it was in that time and place that I think the words of Isaiah 58:6-12 came truly alive for me.
It was in this community that God disrupted our plans for that day. Rather than feeding kids at the Care Point as was our plan, my wife and niece cared for a paralysed gogo, and my son and I washed her clothes. In this very tangible, and I would add, very humbling act of service, God gave me a window into His love and redeeming work that captured my heart in a way that a thousand sermons never could. I left Africa knowing God had called me to something, I just didn't know what yet. Before I left Africa, I shared my stories with one of the leaders whose only response was to say, "So what are you going to do about it?".
I went home with those words echoing in my head. I was resistant to this. I had gone to Africa to see what my son was doing - this was his thing. No matter how I tried, I couldn't silence the call on my heart to be involved. I contacted our Canadian office and spoke to Kristal. My advocacy for the Maranatha community began shortly after that. A few years later, we added the K Block community to that and I joined our Board Of Directors here in Canada.
I also had this conviction that the model of Hands at Work, of mobilising the local church to care for the vulnerable in their community, was largely missing from the church in Canada. This eventually led me to pursue the ministry of Safe Families as my full-time work here at home. Who knew that God would use a short term mission trip, that in all honesty, was done just to check out what my son was up to rather than any real commitment to a call, would change the whole direction of my life."