Monday moments

This past Monday, during our staff check-in before drop-in, we as a team acknowledged that we were feeling tired. There are a number of folks at The Dale whose lives are particularly tumultuous at the moment, a trend that we often see during the hot summer months. Between intense mental health struggles, housing (or lack…

Camp

This past weekend about thirty of us from The Dale went up to Camp Koinonia. It was an adventure, from start to finish! This year we had a number of strong personalities on the trip, and a couple of folks with significant mental health struggles. The combination of these factors led to some tension on…

Back in the saddle

Happy autumn! I/we are back in the swing of things at The Dale, after a very full summer and then some time away. Thanks to the generosity of a dear friend, she and I were able to spend the last couple of weeks away from our regular lives, doing some traveling: exploring, reading, hiking, thinking,…

John

This week has been a tough one. Just days after having Nicole’s death confirmed, we learned that our friend John had also died. John was a genuine kind of guy. A couple of years ago he was quite a constant presence at The Dale. He was going through a very difficult time, and would come…

Nicole

Nicole was special. The first time I met her was at our Wednesday morning art and breakfast drop in a few years ago. She sat in the corner, quietly creating beautiful pen and marker drawings. She would eat breakfast, continue drawing, and then slip out. It took a number of weeks before we had a…

The spice of life

If variety is the spice of life, yesterday was a flavourful day! We met in the morning to do some admin work at our new “office”, the kitchen of a baptist church in Chinatown that has graciously offered us space, access to wifi, and a coffee maker 🙂 We talked through some logistics, answered emails,…

Grateful!

Today I am very grateful. Grateful (on many levels) that Erinn’s husband Dion has been out of the hospital for a couple of weeks now, and that Erinn has been able to return to The Dale. Grateful that a young man in our community will soon be out of the shelter system, and into subsidized…

Salty and bright

I was reading the Gospel of Matthew a couple of days ago, and read the passage where Jesus says “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” (Matt 5:13, 14) Somehow I had always associated those words with the end of Jesus’ ministry, and assumed he was talking to…

Well cared for

A lot has happened since I last blogged! August really got away on me; a familiar feeling, I’m sure. As I wrote last time, Erinn was away for a few weeks. As I trusted would be the case, I was very well supported while she was gone. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement! In…

Never flying solo

Erinn’s away for the next couple of weeks. When I’m explaining The Dale to people and tell them that there are just the two of us on staff, I get some funny looks. And when I say that she’ll be away for a while, I get even funnier looks! I’ll admit that I get a…