Friend for Dinner faces significant shortage of host families

Craig Macartney
Spur Ottawa Writer

Friend for Dinner is scrambling for host families for their annual Thanksgiving outreach. The ministry, now in its sixth year, pairs international students with Christian host families to experience a Canadian holiday meal. However, a misunderstanding has left the team trying to find families to host 130 international students for the fast-approaching Thanksgiving.

“We could go to 500 students by this coming Thanksgiving, but we had to close registration,” laments Henk Wolthaus. “We are trying everything. We need at least 50 hosts.”

Henk and his wife, Irene, spent years on the mission field. Now living in Ottawa, they founded Friends for Dinner as a natural opportunity for Canadian Christians to build friendships and share the gospel with Canada’s booming population of international students.

“The Great Commission is ringing our doorbell, here in Ottawa.”

“The Great Commission is ringing our doorbell, here in Ottawa. This year, Friends for Dinner has 270 students signed up from 33 nations,” Henk explains, with Irene adding, “Three quarters of the students come from nations that are restricted to the gospel. We can reach them and give them what is forbidden in their own country.”

However, Henk says the couple’s cross-cultural background led to a mix-up in finding hosts this year. Early in the year, the couple had 12 different churches express interest in recruiting congregants as hosts. They sent the churches an email with information, including the steps to take leading up to Thanksgiving. When they followed up earlier in September, the plans had slipped through the cracks at most churches.

“You know, pastors are incredibly busy,” Henk says, “so when we followed up to gather the information about how many students they could take, many had not mentioned it from the pulpit. I learned that over here I have to follow up far better, with regular phone calls. In Europe, you don’t do that. That would be bugging them.”

The ministry is extending the registration deadline for hosts this year, hoping to find enough Christian families to accommodate the students who have already signed up. Irene emphasizes that it’s not a big commitment. Families are only committing to host a couple students for a Thanksgiving meal, and it does not even need to be on Thanksgiving Day.

“Three quarters of the students come from nations that are restricted to the gospel.” Photo courtesy of Friends for Dinner.

“What hosts do is register at Friends4Dinner.ca and they get matched with students,” she says. “The students’ names are sent to them with an orientation as to how to do this. They contact the students and make a date. Then they have a Thanksgiving dinner with them.”

The couple says using the opportunity to share God’s love with students is easy and not intimidating. There is a natural bridge talking about the traditions of Thanksgiving, Irene says, to then talk about the One to whom we give thanks.

“We give guidelines on how to do it,” says Henk. “We send information on how to host and love a Muslim or Atheist or Buddhist. The key thing is not to be aggressive and not to be critical of the political situation [in their home country].

“Our passion is to reach the nations that God has brought to our doorstep, through hospitality. We are praying for the Lord to call out His Church in this city, to rise up and respond to the 130 students who do not yet have host families to share God’s love story with them over a delicious Thanksgiving meal.”