Westwood Church is gearing up for its first sponsored Syrian family to arrive in Prince George in the coming weeks.
"We wouldn't be surprised if the first family gets here before the end of the year which is exciting but we're scrambling a bit to make sure everything's ready," said Pastor Mark Wessner.
The incoming family of five refugees includes a mother, father and three adult children - two sons and a daughter.
It will be the first of three families the church is sponsoring. The second, a single mother and her teenage son and daughter, will likely arrive early in the new year.
Their paperwork is done, but it still has to get the final stamp of approval before a flight will be booked.
The first family is Christian and Wessner said he isn't sure of the faith of the second family.
"We're not approaching this through a lens of: what's their faith?" said Wessner.
"We should help those of our faith that are in need, but we shouldn't exclude people."
Wessner said he's excited for the moment the family steps off the plane. It's a moment the church has been working towards for almost 14 months, when members started discussing the emerging crisis in Syria. But at that point, refugee settlement hadn't become a Canadian priority. The government has since pledged to resettle 25,000 refugees by the end of February.
"We were kind of on our own," said Wessner.
Some members of the congregation knew people in Syria and through them, the church connected and chose the first family.
"There was a lot of slow conversation and paperwork. There wasn't anybody to say 'here's how to do it.' Nothing was being fast tracked, but we knew we had to have refugees that were approved" and listed as such under the United Nations, he said.
"It turns out they were."
It also helped that church could turn to the Mennonite Central Committee, a worldwide ministry of Anabaptist churches.
"There's a lot of MCC presence in the Middle East and (it) has been there for a long time. We thought 'good grief, we need to be working with them.' It's almost in a sense through them that we've done this sponsorship, kind of tapped into their expertise, their standing, their reputation as an approved so to speak relief agency."
From there it was simply "paperwork, paperwork, paperwork," he said with a laugh.
That, and pulling together a team of six leaders to commit to supporting the family.
"It takes a long time for relationships to happen, so this is a multi-year commitment that we're making," he said.
"A lot of it just has been conversations behind the scenes, with people who have different business, or they're realtors or they're doctors or they're lawyers," he said, adding the church has relied on many local organizations for help.
"We've got all kinds of commitments from all kinds of people."
It also meant proving the church could financially support the newcomers. Because the two families aren't on the Blended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) list, the organization can't expect matching funds from the government.
That means the church must raise between $50,000 and $60,000 per family, Wessner said.
"We're actually not eligible for funding from the government at all because we didn't follow their process but the reason we didn't follow their process is we started before they did."
But Wessner said it can still be seen as a positive, since the first two families weren't on the BVOR list.
"In a sense it's good probably because these people might have fallen through the cracks," he said.
Wessner said now that the church knows the first family is coming soon, it will start fundraising in earnest on Sunday.
The congregation, which has about 700 attendees every week, runs on an annual budget of about $900,000 that is raised entirely on donations.
He said he's confident the congregation will come through, supported by the community at large. In fact it's already happening.
"Prince George is an amazing community. People who have nothing to do with Westwood... have heard what we're doing and we have been receiving donations already."
The church can also expect a $2,200 donation after Sunday's fundraiser by the group PG Citizens for Syrian Refugees that has raised more than $12,000 since it started a few months ago.
The rest of those funds will go to a group of five women who have signed on to sponsor a Syrian family, under the government's G5 program.
"We're doing this out of love," said Dorothy Friesen, one of the group of five, who said she's been overwhelmed by how much has been raised through three fundraisers in the last week.
"Things have just taken off," she said.
On the table in the group's new office at the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society of B.C., Friesen had fanned out dozens of posters drawn by students, depicting images of Prince George and messages welcoming the refugees.
She plans on making booklets and handing them to the families when they arrive.
In the meantime, she has a pile of paperwork on her desk and a goal of about $30,000 to get the family in Prince George by summertime.
Wessner said that generosity is part of the DNA of his church.
"To me it's really encouraging to be a part of an organization that looks outward, that it isn't about self preservation. We're about making a difference in the world around us.
"We're trying to be very aware too, not for us to have the Western saviour mentality that we have it all and we're helping you because you need it. You know what, if they're going to be coming here that also means they have a lot to offer."
