We' ve Gained So Much by Welcoming Newcomers in Our Home in Canada

We love living in Canada! Canada is one of the most culturally diverse countries on earth. Canada opens its door and each year we welcome at least 250,000.00 newcomers from the four corners of the world. This is a regular number of new immigrants the Canadian government allows to get into our country through the official immigration process. However, if there are any special situations such as natural disasters, conflicts or wars happening in the world, Canada will allow additional number of refugees of wars or victims of disasters and admit them into our land as a relief for victims.

We, as Canadian citizens, applaud our government's efforts to help refugees and victims and many of us also open our homes to welcome them. In January of 2024, we were privilaged to open our home and welcome a newcomer family to our Waterloo home. Upon our invitation, the family of six, two parents and four kids came and spent an evening with us. We treated them with some traditional Canadian food, desserts and after dinner games for the kids. We discovered that no matter what rich food we served our guests, nothing tasted as good as their own native food. Instead of chicken nuggets and french fries we thought the kids would like, the most popular dish for that evening turned out to be rice and beans and cabbage! Wow, I learned something that night about what kids like to eat.

Another evening, we received two international students from Europe in our home. One of the exchanged students from Waterloo university finished her four month term in Canada and was going back home. We received her and her friend at our home on her last night in Canada. We cooked together, shared a meal and had some great conversations. What a fantastic time we had!

Sometimes we think by giving up some of our time and effort to help other, we are sacrifing something. How wrong are we! Time and time again, we have found that by helping others and opening our homes to strangers, we gain so much joy and happiness in return. We thank God immensely for giving us the health, the mobility and the resources to do what we can and share with others! We look forward to welcoming and serving more newcomers to our homes in Ontario, Canada RT Waterloo, Canada