Ottawa Pastor's Wife: I Had More Volunteers Than I Knew What To Do With
'I want a trucker. Send me a trucker.'
During the time the Freedom Convoy was in Ottawa, it was ministered to by the Bikers Church. The building itself is a large, informal community hall with a pool table, a dart board, and a kitchen that fed hot meals to as many as 250 people on Tuesdays long before the pandemic arrived.
In late January, Pastor Rob McKee decided to keep the church open from 10 am to 10 pm daily so that the truckers could escape the cold. Interviewed eight weeks after the convoy had left Ottawa, his wife Melissa describes what took place after that decision was made:
I had more volunteers than I knew what to do with. When I put the call out …everybody wanted in. People were calling me and texting me, and saying: ‘I wanna take a trucker in. I want a trucker. Send me a trucker.’
…I guess people thought they’re gonna come, park their trucks, and they need somewhere to live. That’s not how it was. They stayed in their vehicles, their trucks were their homes. So things were shifting all the time. We were rolling with it.
And then I got a call from a chef in Toronto, a Red Seal chef in Toronto who said I wanna come, and I wanna cook. I wanna make sure the meals are done properly, to health standards…
It was the Polish community. I don’t know if everybody realizes how the Polish and the Russian and even Ukrainian communities came together and provided so many things for the convoy. So many things.
We ended up having to put, we called it our Trucker Table, at the back of the church. With socks, and underwear, and wipes, and lip balm, and hand santizer, and granola bars. I mean, the abudance of everything.
…One volunteer…called me and said, ‘What do you need?’ I said, ‘You know what, I need five bags of carrots for soups and stews we’re gonna make.’ And he came in and he brought 10 bags. And then we realized they were double bags.
So I got 20 bags of carrots and that, to me…honestly, it was like God saying ‘Watch what I’m gonna do. Watch how I’m going to supply every single need.’
Part 2: This Miraculous Thing: Polish immigrants, phone chargers & surging church attendance
And that is how miracles happen.