17 minute read
Here to Stay
With the help of The Salvation Army, Blessing and her family found a new home free from fear. by Linda Leigh
After years of being hunted down by a dangerous and deadly cult in their home country of Nigeria, Blessing and her family escaped to Canada for safety and solace. Today, she is in a place better than she could have imagined—and The Salvation Army helped to get her there.
Fear and Intimidation “In Nigeria, I lived a good life, had a boyfriend and a successful career
Trauma, Hope and Survival Blessing and Samuel at The Salvation Army’s 614 Corps in Toronto, where they both volunteer
as a criminal lawyer,” says Blessing. “Then everything changed when a cult wanted Samuel’s obedience, time and money.
“Samuel wanted nothing to do with having evil on his hands,” continues Blessing. “But when you refuse to co-operate with the cult, you are in immediate danger.” Samuel went into hiding for years with only a handful of people knowing his whereabouts. When he eventually married Blessing, he
slipped back into society.
“One day, as we walked down the street, Samuel’s cellphone rang,” says Blessing. “The caller described the clothes we were wearing, my accessories and threatened to cut our throats.”
The frightening calls continued. “We will find you. We will kill you. We won’t stop until we know you are dead.” Blessing and Samuel were ultimately tracked down. Blessing was kidnapped and endured a brutal beating. Samuel was taken into the bush where he was attacked and left for dead.
New Life In 2017, Blessing, Samuel and their young daughter fled the country they once held dear. They came to Montreal through the United States and, soon after their arrival, their second daughter was born.
“In 2018, we moved to Toronto with the hope that I could return to my career,” says Blessing. “For months we lived in a family shelter with a few articles of clothing and little food.” Before long, Blessing heard that The Salvation Army could help. “The Salvation Army gave us everything we needed—food, clothing, diapers, shelter and a listening ear,” says Blessing.
Today Blessing and her family live in an apartment in the Regent Park area of Toronto. Blessing works at a legal clinic and is waiting for accreditation to be an immigration lawyer. Samuel is a property manager. They both volunteer at The Salvation Army.
“We are not broken,” says Blessing. “The Salvation Army gave us hope for a better future—one with new possibilities and more personal strength. We are here to stay.”
Reprinted from The Salvation Army Canada & Bermuda Annual Report 2018-19
(left) Linda Leigh is manager of communications at The Salvation Army’s territorial headquarters in Toronto.
Pushing My Buttons
SOMETIMES, EVEN A SELF-PROCLAIMED “QUEEN OF TROUBLESHOOTING” NEEDS HELP TO SOLVE A PROBLEM. by Belinda Davis
Just over 12 months ago, my husband and I purchased one of the best things ever—a Jacuzzi. I really love having a Jacuzzi, so much so that we have used it almost every day in the past year, sitting and soaking, letting the bubbles dissolve our stresses. Imagine our distress when our Jacuzzi pump recently stopped working.
The Missing Step My husband had a go at fixing the issue, but when it still didn’t work,
I decided to help. I am the selfproclaimed “queen of troubleshooting,” so my first stop was the owner’s manual. I followed the instructions to reset the unit, but no joy.
I turned to my next source of information—Google. I followed the steps online for a “hard reset.” Nothing. I tried once more, just in case. Same result.
At this point, there was only one course of action left—contact the company. I was sure this would cost us money because our warranty had expired a few weeks earlier
(of course), but I took a deep breath and rang them.
I spoke to a lovely customer service representative who listened to my explanation and assurances that I had followed all the appropriate steps. He sympathized with my situation and found a reasonably cheap resolution if I could forward And, lo and behold, what did I find? The reset button! And what happened when I pressed it? The unit sprang to life. I was both excited and embarrassed at the same time. Yes, the queen of troubleshooting had assumed she knew exactly what the instructions were referring to, all the while missing a vital step.
some documents via email.
I was super-pleased with myself for negotiating this good deal and sent him the requested information. The email reply I received said something like: “Before we proceed, I just want to check that you have pressed this reset button on the unit” with a picture of where the button should be located.
Now, I had read about the reset button and had already pressed it (several times). The button I had been pushing was located on the Jacuzzi’s electrical cord, because I couldn’t see one on the unit. I was absolutely certain that our pump’s model didn’t have the button displayed in that picture, but I did the right thing and checked again. This time, though, I didn’t just look; I ran my fingers carefully along the unit, using the picture as a guide.
Finding the Reset It’s so important to follow the instructions we are given in life, and not just think we already know everything. If things aren’t going well, it’s a good idea to ask for help and try something slightly different, even if we believe we know what the outcome will be. For me, the best source of information is the Bible, the written Word of God. May I encourage you not to assume you know what the pages may contain, but actually read it more closely and follow the instructions for living held within. Don’t be like me and miss out on things because you believe you’ve already given it a go and it didn’t work for you.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll find the reset button along the way.
Tricks of the Trade
SAWYER BULLOCK HAS SOMETHING UP HIS SLEEVE HE WANTS EVERYONE TO KNOW ABOUT: HIS FAITH. by Ken Ramstead
The Magic Touch Sawyer Bullock’s influences include Penn & Teller, Eric Mead and Derren Brown. “I first discovered Derren when I was teetering on the edge of giving magic up, as I found it trivial compared to other things I could be spending my time on. He embodied what it meant to take the craft seriously and respectfully–though that doesn’t mean that every performance has to be solemn or heavy!”
THE MAIN LOBBY OF THE MOSAIC, a resort located in the Blue Mountain area north of Toronto, is packed with guests of all ages, some coming in from the slopes and others registering. But time has stopped in one area just off the front desk.
Sawyer Bullock—aka Magician Ordinaire, as it says on his business card—is holding his audience spellbound as he performs feat after feat of sleight of hand.
He astounds some youngsters with his threecard trick, where he asks them to deal a trio of cards out of the deck and hand them back to him—only when they do, they keep handing a quartet back. He withdraws the fourth and returns three. Yet despite numerous attempts, they keep giving him four cards.
“And that’s the three-card trick!” he smiles. But the most amazing trick occurs when
Sawyer asks one woman to take a coin out of her own purse, write her initials on it with a permanent marker and then hold it in her fist. At no time does he touch the loonie himself.
Sawyer asks her to imagine the coin as a chocolate melting in her hand. When she opens her palm, abracadabra: the loonie is now folded over!
“I felt it move in my hand!” she says. “How did you do that?”
“Years of practice and social isolation,” Sawyer comically replies.
A Course in Faith Sawyer, 24, was born and raised in Stayner, Ont., just outside of Collingwood, Ont.
“Thankfully,” he recalls, “both my parents are strong Christians, so there never was a time in my life when I didn’t know God’s love and the personal work of Jesus.”
“How Did You Do That?” The actual folded coin mentioned in the text
Growing up, Sawyer was fortunate to have good mentors and pastors in his studies right up to and including Tyndale University in Toronto, where he graduated with a degree in philosophy.
“I originally went there for a business degree because I thought I’d need one to manage my magic career,” he says. “But I had to take some required philosophy courses, and I not only enjoyed them but found they helped me with my faith.”
In the Spotlight When Sawyer was seven, he attended Muskoka Bible Centre, a Christian retreat in Ontario, where he took in a magic act.
“The magician passed out a little booklet showing a couple of easyto-do tricks. I remember reading those, then going to the local library in Stayner and borrowing all their magic books—they had two!”
He kept checking and rechecking the books out and showing the staff what he had learned until one librarian said, “Sawyer, why not do a show here?”
The youngster was ready to step into the spotlight.
“Sawyer Does Tricks” How did that first show go?
“It was awful,” Sawyer laughs now. “I didn’t know you had to have an act or anything planned out ahead of time, and I was doing some tricks on the fly. The audience was a social and support group for young mothers and their babies, so they were just hanging out. But they were very supportive. I couldn’t have asked for a better opening-night crowd.”
Living in a small town and being part of a faith community, word got out that “Sawyer does tricks” and he was soon asked to perform at birthday parties, barbecues and church events. Almost by necessity, Sawyer started expanding his act to keep up with demand.
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life just doing birthday parties. I think there’s more to the Christian life than that.” SAWYER BULLOCK
“I kept being invited back to the same places,” he explains. “Some locations have been booking me year after year for almost a decade now, and for 50 to 60 days a year during the season, over and above my private bookings.
“It’s like being a musician,” he explains. “You learn your first couple of songs and then you start adding more to your repertoire. The same with tricks. And you start to get a feel for what audiences prefer.”
A Restored Whole Depending on the audience, Sawyer will bring his faith to bear.
“Most of my show is fast-paced and upbeat and I interact with as many people as I can,” he explains. But when he starts winding up the show, the house lights are dimmed and he puts things into a lower gear. “The whole universe in a piece of yarn,” Sawyer says, holding it in his hand.
Piece by piece, he starts breaking it apart while talking about “the reality of pain, loss and suffering, tragedy and misplaced hope, which are the realities of this life on earth.” Sawyer then rolls the separate pieces together into a ball.
“How do you fix something that’s so broken?” he asks the audience. “This is where the gospel comes in. “It shows us what could be, what should be and maybe what will be—the broken made whole, the shattered restored.”
As he says these words, Sawyer opens his hand and displays what were once a dozen different lengths of yarn are one restored piece again. “That is the Christian message of restoration and redemption.”
In His Blood Depending on if he is performing at, say, a Salvation Army function, Sawyer will also share his own faith journey and engage with the audience. “It’s a big decision, probably the
most important thing that you can do with your life,” he’ll tell a young audience at a Christian youth outreach retreat. “Let me tell you what it’s done for me. Let me tell you why I think Jesus is worth it.” And then he does. Currently studying at Ryerson University in Toronto, Sawyer has no idea if magic is in his future.
“I do know that this is something I like to do but what I’ll be using these shows for is yet to be determined. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life just doing birthday parties,” he says. “I think there’s more to the Christian life than that. So whether performing is how I’ll pay the bills or whether I simply use it to support my local church, either as a member of the congregation or in a more formal ministry capacity with some kind of campus outreach group, that’s still up in the air.
“But one way or another, magic will always be in my blood.”
Solitaire Sawyer is in the process of securing a permanent location for his magic act and hopes to have a show up and running soon
THIRD-BASEMAN COREY KOSKIE THOUGHT NO ONE UNDERSTOOD HIS BATTLE WITH POSTCONCUSSION SYNDROME. BUT SOMEONE DID. by Jayne Thurber-Smith All in His Head
Corey Koskie went all the way from hitting rocks with a wooden bat on a farm outside Winnipeg to manning third base for the Minnesota Twins. After enjoying seven years with the Twins, he played for a year with the Toronto Blue Jays and then went on to the Milwaukee Brewers.
But three months into that 2006 season, Corey went from living the taken to the training room, where he was diagnosed with a concussion.
When Corey got home that day, he thought he could just rest it off, but he continued to feel weird sensations, such as the room spinning and the floor moving when he tried to walk. For a week and a half, he tried to minimize what he was experiencing and push through it, and finally the symptoms went away.
dream to a waking nightmare. It began when he tried to chase down a routine pop-up in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.
A Personal Prison “I sprinted to the spot where I thought the ball would land,” he recalls, “but when I looked up, the ball was behind me. I fell backward and got my glove underneath the ball. When my glove hit the dirt, the impact sent the ball back in the air. Our shortstop was right there to catch it. The crowd went wild.” Unfortunately, as the game progressed, Corey began to hear all sounds as a jumbled mess, and the ground felt mushy underfoot. He tried to shake it off but couldn’t concentrate no matter how he tried. He finally told the trainer he didn’t feel well and was “I felt great,” he remembers, “until I stepped on the field. After warming up, I felt sick.”
The team sent Corey back to the hotel to sleep it off.
“When I woke up, I had the worst head pain of my life,” he says. “My symptoms went from a zero to a 10, just like that. For the next two and a half years, I battled these symptoms. Every day, all the time. I’d try to do little things around the house, and the room would spin. I had bouts of anxiety, depression and obsessive thoughts.”
Forget about a baseball comeback— Corey feared he would never get his life back.
Making him feel even worse was the fact that no one really understood what he was up against, because everything he suffered was internal.
Reaching Out Corey catches a line drive during his playing days with the Milwaukee Brewers
“If I were to write a book about my concussion experience it would be titled If I Only Had a Cast,” he says. “It’s literally in your head, so people don’t see that. You have all these demons pounding you, and all the tools you’ve used to deal with your stuff in the past don’t work. I couldn’t read or write or even go on the computer because everything made me feel sick. I couldn’t drive, or talk on the phone. I was in my own personal prison.”
“I’m Done” Corey sought refuge in the basement of his house, where he could shut the doors and find absolute quiet.
“I would just lie there,” he says. “On the wall, there was a framed Bible verse plaque that read, ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10). I would stare at that and God would give me peace, because I’d have to
What Is a Concussion? A concussion is a brain injury. Any blow to the head, face or neck may cause a concussion, and it can also be caused by a blow to the body if the force of the blow causes the brain to move around inside the skull.
be still with my mind and be OK not doing anything else.”
As Corey waited on God, he went through a series of doctors until he found the right one to treat him, and he finally began to see progress in his recovery. He learned that many athletes try to return to the game too fast, which makes them susceptible to brain injuries.
“The mistake that I made was trying to rush myself back because I really wanted to play, and that cost me my career,” he says.
The day came when the doctor finally said, “Medically, you’re fine, so I will clear you. But you’ve got a great family that you love. Why would you still want to play baseball? If you get
another concussion, I don’t know what will happen.”
“All I knew was that playing baseball would mean I was my view of normal,” Corey says. “So I tried again. I got a minor league invite with the Chicago Cubs and they were incredible to me. I played a couple of games, but then in the third game I dove for a ball and kind of felt funny. I pulled myself off the field and said, ‘I’m done. It’s not worth it.’ I walked away on my own terms.”
A Necessary Ending Now coaching his own kids’ teams, he knows that early retirement was the best thing that could have happened to him.
“It was a necessary ending at that time,” he says. “I am so glad I have been able to have these years with my boys.” Corey hopes to encourage the next generation of kids by sharing his own
For Services Rendered In 2018, Corey received a Diamond Award, an annual presentation that celebrates baseball and philanthropy, and is based on voting conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America
and other athletes’ stories of what God can do on his website Linklete. com. He still deals with anxiety but continues to fight it with the sword of the Spirit, the Bible, just as he did in his basement a dozen years ago.
“Everybody deals with the voice of self-doubt and what-if, and I have a few go-to verses for that,” he says. “Philippians 4:6 says, ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’ ”
What Is PCS? Post-concussion syndrome (PCS) is a set of symptoms that may continue for weeks, months or a year or more after a concussion. About 15 percent of individuals with a history of a single concussion develop persistent symptoms associated with the injury. A diagnosis may be made when symptoms resulting from concussion last for more than three months after the injury.
Though there is no specific treatment for PCS, symptoms can be improved with medications and physical and behavioural therapy. Education about symptoms and details about expectation of recovery are important. The majority of PCS cases resolve after a period of time.
