“I literally had to turn people away and say, ‘No, we have enough.’”

Ilana Reimer
Special to Spur Ottawa

On May 30, three days before the Big Give 2018, a Barrhaven fire displaced 16 families. One was a refugee family who had recently moved to Ottawa. They had a young baby and three other kids under the age of nine.

“We knew that their needs would be great because they lost everything,” says Kathy Blakely, who co-founded the Big Give and attends Woodvale Pentecostal Church.

Within 24 hours of hearing the family’s situation, Woodvale opened its doors to allow the family first pick of anything they needed, the day before the official Big Give. The family filled two vehicles with furniture, clothing, dishes, small appliances, a baby stroller, and bikes for the kids.

The family had spent their first few months in Ottawa living with a relative, which meant fifteen people crammed into one house. Not long after finding a place of their own, it burned down.

“I could tell the whole ordeal had been hard on them,” says Wayne Mosely, also a member of Woodvale and co-founder of the Big Give. “The whole family was very stressed.”

“They were moved to tears.”

Woodvale was not the only church who encountered a refugee family in need through the Big Give. Yvonne Parks, a member of the eldership team at Vineyard Ottawa, met a Syrian couple named Ayoub and Mouna.

Ayoub had been a philosophy professor in Syria. Now, he lives in a country where he does not know the language. The couple had recently found a place to live, but still needed furnishings for their living room.

“You could see it was really humbling for them because before the war they were secure,” says Parks. “They were moved to tears.”

When the need was brought forward, the church’s response was overwhelming, Parks says. Within a week, they had everything for the couple’s living room.

“I literally had to turn people away and say, ‘No, we have enough.’”

Giving without conditions

Being able to bless others without promoting specific churches or charitable organizations is crucial to how the Big Give operates.

“The mandate of the Big Give is to give and ask nothing in return,” says Mosely. “We extend the love of God and leave it to the recipient to respond in the way they want.”

The Big Give has grown rapidly since it began at Woodvale Pentecostal church, in 2009. In 2015, it became a city-wide event. This year, 130 churches across Canada mobilized on June 2 to offer free gifts to their neighbours in need.

This year, 18 people gave their lives to Christ on the day of the Big Give.

The goal is to point people to Jesus through actions, without pushing an agenda.

“Everyone’s on a journey to either find God or go away from God,” explains Blakely. “What we hope with the Big Give is that it will lead them to God.”

The Big Give team strongly encourages churches to pray with people and offer Alpha resources and free Bibles so that the connection is clear: They give because God gives. Some churches have seen people lined up for prayer at their events. The organizational team estimates Big Give events have given out well over 1,000 Bibles. This year, 18 people gave their lives to Christ on the day of the Big Give. “And that’s only the people we’ve heard of,” Blakely adds.

The team’s hope is that each year more churches across Canada become involved with the Big Give. Parks looks beyond even that.

“My heart is that, as the body of Christ, we would be even better at having the Big Give be a part of our culture and our daily walk,” she says, “that we would have a Big Give mentality every day of the year.”