Bingo Blessings

In November last year 2022, just before Thanksgiving, Eric and I had the privilege to travel up to the launch of Hands at Work’s newest care point in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. Here, our brothers and sisters in Christ are serving orphans and widows and fulfilling our biblical mandate to care for them.

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I want to remember this special event in our time there, in connecting with a teenager there, in being blessed by blessing.

In Saskatoon, the majority of the communities being served by Hands at Work are "First Nation" - this is the term the Indigenous People of Canada have chosen to identify themselves as in their country. (I learned something new!)

Our Hands team was invited to help serve at one of the events. It was a Kookum Bingo event.

At the event was pizza dinner with juice boxes, mandarins, and of course a salad. There was a gymnasium full of balls, balloons, a painting activity, and board games to entertain the kids while the Kookums played Bingo. Bingo's big winners took home prizes like like spaghetti and red sauce. Honestly, as a mom, I appreciate the idea of spaghetti and red sauce as a prize. It means that another meal is planned, bought, and near ready in my house.

Kookums are First Nation’s term for grandmothers (and some grandfathers) that in this case have assumed guardianship or have adopted their grandchildren. Unfortunately, rampant alcoholism and drug abuse have robbed many of these families of mothers and fathers. But these heroic grandparents have stepped up to care for their grandchildren. Some of these Kookums have even redeemed their grandchildren from the foster care system where they were placed when originally removed from their parents.

As the Kookums and children poured into the gymnasium for the event, the noise and balloons quickly filled the air. One girl glided in on her electric wheelchair and parked like a wallflower at the edge of the basketball court. Jayme, one of the care workers of the Hands at Work Saskatoon care point, introduced me to this girl and told me that she was "really cool and loves to talk".

Yay! I get to chat it up with a teenage girl about who knows what for a bit. I really had no idea that this event would encourage me so much and teach me about God’s love for me and these people on a deeper level in just one night.

I started asking her questions. How old are you? Do you have brothers and sisters? what shows do you like to watch?

Her words were muddled by the volume of the balls and shouts. There was NOT the challenge of a different language as there often is in Africa, but the barrier was with her body, stiff and limited in motion, unable to fully execute the directions given by her mind. This girl with her long black hair and tilted head lit up with every question I asked her. She told me about her brothers and sisters, how they lived in different places, were older and younger than she was, and how she loved to watch Kung Fu shows. She giggled and smiled when I made silly comments about things that were going on around us with the balls and balloons. She laughed- expressing a soft, but sincere connection to the joy that we were included in together.

I asked her if I could eat dinner with her and she was delighted to give me her order of how many slices of pizza, how much salad, what kind of juice box she wanted as I formulated each question to require only “yes” or “no” answers to simplify and ease our communication. I sat next to her and quickly realized that she could not feed herself.

Then I had the great honor of getting to feed her and spend the rest of the evening with her. It sounds so strange to call it a great honor, but for me it was. As I fed her, I held back waves of overwhelming feelings with a sincere smile. As I fed her I was flooded with memories of feeding my own mother while she was in, what seemed to be, the same physical state as this young girl with her withered hands and body and couldn’t feed herself. As I fed her I looked around at all the other kids feeding themselves, all the other adults chatting up quick and lively conversations. I was just about to ask God why I had been assigned to this girl, but even as my mind began to ask the question, the Father flooded my heart with the answer. As I fed her, I felt prepared, I felt trained and equipped to serve her and connect with her because of all that God had brought me through as a mother-feeding babies, as a daughter-of a dying and crippled mother, as a feeder of hungry people that can’t feed themselves. With each bite and sip she took I felt an affirmation that the years of reading body language and making the right bite sizes were not in vain, were not pointless, were not unseen. El Roi “The God who Sees” all that we go through had been training and equipping me for this very special evening with this young woman.

After dinner and cleaning her up, we went to hang out with the other teenagers and paint an ornament together. We painted a polar bear tangled up in Christmas lights. And when I say "we" painted it together I mean that I got to help place the paintbrush in her hand, she picked the colors, and she made something with her own hands.

When the night was over, her Kookum came to collect her and my new friend beamed with pride over her ornament that dangled from the side of her wheelchair. When the night was over we were both blessed by being recognized by the Father loved, noticed, important, worthy of receiving and sharing His love.

Your support of Hands at Work allows and contributes to these types of connections and events. Your support financially and prayerfully helps to encourage and facilitate these programs that are providing relief to these heroic families. Your support strengthens and equips those that are struggling to survive.