‘We were brought up helping people’
Mary Huminilowycz was supposed to be home preparing Christmas dinner for her family.
Instead, she was one of team of 18 volunteers from Calvary Church who spent Christmas Eve cooking enough food for about 120 hungry people.
“This is the priority,” Huminilowycz said, while tending to the turkey dinner cooking in the ovens at Westminster United Church hall — the Out of the Cold program’s host site on Sunday evenings.
She said her family would not go hungry if she wasn’t there to cook for them. The same can’t be said about many of the guests who arrived at the church Sunday.
“Families take second place,” quipped volunteer Joe Biega.
“We were brought up helping people. We would give out dinner to people in the neighbourhood who were down and out.”
He said the volunteers — many of whom have worked together for about 20 years — are continuing to help people by working with Out of the Cold.
“I feel gratification that at least I’m doing something for somebody. I’m not putting myself first,” Biega said. “These people are not as fortunate as we are. We’re supposed to look after those that are less fortunate than yourself, right.”
When the meal was over, another group of volunteers arrived to spend the night there to ensure that more than 40 people had a warm place to sleep on mats set up on the floor of the church hall, said Paula Leshkewich, the Calvary Church group’s volunteer co-ordinator.
She said the holiday season makes it more difficult to find people willing to help.
Although she has a pool of about 30 volunteers to call on to help out, she said some of the regulars couldn’t be there due to family commitments.
“I have it really tight-knit. Everybody has their task,” she said, adding many of the volunteers that were helping out that night were newcomers to the program.
But for volunteer Dave Bale, who often brings his family with him to help out during the meals, the holiday season makes the work they do even more vital.
“It’s just what we do, especially at this time of the year,” Bale said.
“We don’t do it all of the time but we do it when there’s more of a need. We’re helping. We’re good to go and the Lord calls us to serve. It’s what we do. We’ve been given so much and it’s time to give back.”
The group’s cooking co-ordinator, Sophie Martens, said it is gratifying to see the reaction from the people they’re helping.
“They’ll come to the window and say, ‘Excellent meal,’” she said. “That really means a lot. I enjoy doing that. It’s only once a month.”
It’s the second year in a row that the volunteers had worked through the Christmas season. Last year, they were at the church on Christmas Day.
Martens recalled one of the guests asking her who made the stuffing.
“I thought, ‘Uh-oh, what’s wrong with the stuffing?’”
“He said, ‘That’s the best I’ve ever had.’”
Christmas Eve wasn’t the only special night that the volunteers have spent helping people in need. While another group of volunteers spent Christmas Day this year volunteering to offer food and shelter to people in need at Silver Spire Church, the Calvary Church team worked that day in 2016.
It’s about sacrifice. Biega for instance, noted he missed out on seeing the Toronto Argonauts beat the Calgary Stampeders in the Grey Cup game on the last night he volunteered, Nov. 26.
But that night, the volunteers served 190 meals, and 46 people spent the night sleeping on mats in the church hall.