A few days ago, at a meeting with our outreach team, I heard a story that has stayed with me. It wasn’t dramatic in the way headlines are dramatic. It was quiet, almost ordinary, yet it revealed something profound about what compassion looks like in our city when people refuse to give up on one another.

It was the story of A, a neighbour who has been living in his van for several years. Many of our volunteers at St. Alban’s have met him over time, bringing food, checking in, and offering what support they could. A was never an easy person to approach. Life on the margins shapes people in ways most of us will never fully understand. But B, one of our outreach leaders, slowly built a fragile but real trust with him.

A’s legs had been worsening for a long time. Everyone could see it. Everyone worried. Yet every suggestion that he go to the hospital was met with the same fear: if he left, what would happen to his van? Where would it go? Where would he sleep? For A, the van wasn’t just a vehicle. It was the last piece of stability he had left, and losing it would mean losing everything.

He parked it in the lot of a coffee shop, always watching, always anxious that it might be towed away. That fear kept him from seeking the care he desperately needed.

Then something unexpected happened. As B shared A’s situation with K’s team, one of the members, C, spoke up almost casually, as if offering a cup of tea: “He can park his van in my apartment’s parking spot.” No fanfare. No big speech. Just a simple, generous sentence.

That one sentence changed everything. With a safe place for the van, A finally agreed to go to the hospital. B moved the van to C’s parking spot. A received the medical attention he had been avoiding for years, and eventually he was admitted into a long‑term care facility. He no longer has to sleep in a van, worry about parking, or carry the weight of survival alone.

A parking spot became a sanctuary. A small gesture became a doorway to healing. A quiet act of kindness became the turning point in someone’s life.

This is just one of many stories I have heard and witnessed while working alongside the outreach team of St. Alban’s. Week after week, our volunteers meet people where they are, often in situations that fall between the cracks of formal services. We build trust slowly, sometimes over years. We respond to fears that are invisible to most. And when the moment comes, we help people take steps they could not take alone.

Stories like A’s remind me that our outreach ministry is not simply about delivering food or offering a warm conversation. It is about creating the conditions where dignity can be restored, where someone who has been surviving on the margins can finally say yes to help, and where small acts of kindness open the door to long‑term stability.

For our city, these quiet interventions matter. They reduce emergency calls. They prevent crises. They connect vulnerable neighbours to the care they need. And they do so through relationships — patient, persistent, human relationships — that no program can replicate.

This is the ministry we carry, and this is the work we hope to continue with the support of our city, our neighbours, and all who believe that every person deserves care, dignity, and a chance to begin again.