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After retiring from a professional career in teaching, Liane now spends her time volunteering at New Hope Community Services (NHCS) teaching ESL in Surrey, BC.
More than 20 years ago, Liane started a Mission committee at Bear Creek Community Church, now called Nova Church. The church heavily invested their time and resources with an organization in Mexico that started as an orphanage and later grew into a large community development with daycare staffing, an ambulance, kitchen gardens and a macadamia nut orchard/business.
This became the vision of Bear Creek (now Nova Church) as they asked, How do we respond to the need in our community? And so, the relationship with NHCS began.
New Hope Community Services provides transitional housing for newcomers with their 13-unit apartment building. Three of those units are staffed with people who are seeking to serve or have already served in cross-cultural ministry. In addition to ESL teaching and conversational English times, NHCS has a doula, a math tutor, and many volunteers for after school and summer children’s programs.
The team has walked alongside multiple newcomer families resettling in Canada by collecting household items, setting up apartments, helping families move and get groceries, and providing fun birthday gifts for kids. For many years, the church hosted special Christmas and Easter celebrations, providing opportunity to share why we celebrate. The celebration continues today.
The photo above is from a baby shower recently hosted for a new mother in the building. For newcomers without any family connection, relationships are important. Liane says, “I get to be a grandma to all these kids, and a mom to these mothers who are missing their mothers.” Here are some words from those who participated.
"I am in Canada, far away from my family, but God sends my kind and loving sisters who are close to my heart. Today is one of the happiest days of my life. Thank you all for the baby shower... Thanks, New Hope...you are my family."
Liane shares another story of helping those families in NCHS in a critical circumstance.
“A mattress was lit on fire, leaning against the back fence. It burnt down their entire parking structure – 40-foot-high flames! In the fall, they had installed double-paned windows. It saved [NCHS's] building. Everybody got out.... It’s just kind of a miracle…."
“My most impactful moment was after the fire because people were really terrified.... Some of these people who have come from very traumatic backgrounds were retraumatized by [the subsequent explosions of gas canisters as a result of the fire]... Thursday was when I went for my first class after this [fire] happened on Monday. There was a father just clutching his child and kind of rocking back and forth and saying, ‘You know, before I felt really safe and now I feel like I got to lock the door and I need a go-bag near the door in case all of my papers get burned.’ One of the ladies was there and she said to me, ‘What do you do if something [terrible happens]?’ ... I said, ‘Well, I pray. And if I haven’t got the words, I read my Bible.’ And she said, ‘Do you just open it up?’ I said, ‘Well, I do. I just open it up and then always there’s something. Always there’s something that helps me.’ "
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