The Road Back to Hope At Yorkminster Citadel, Lola Agosu found the support she needed to make a new life in Canada.
Photos: Kristin Ostensen
BY KRISTIN OSTENSEN
D
id I make the right decision? Or was coming to Canada a mistake? Lola Agosu struggled to shake the doubts and questions that were crowding her mind. It had been months since she and her five children left their home in Nigeria, and the immigration process had stalled. Even working two part-time jobs, Agosu found it hard to provide for her family. Nothing seemed to be going their way. “I was beginning to lose faith, wondering why God wasn’t answering prayer,” Agosu recalls. “I was starting to feel like God didn’t love me anymore.” W hat she needed, more than anything, was hope. 20 February 2020 Salvationist
Lola Agosu and her children attend Yorkminster Citadel in Toronto
The Right Fit Agosu and her children—aged six to 24— arrived in Canada in December 2017, settling in Toronto soon after. It was a difficult decision to leave her husband and their life behind, but a necessary one in order to protect their children. “I was having issues with my husband’s family because they expected us to be having boys, and I kept having girls,” Agosu explains. “There were threats and attacks. Our kids were no longer little children. We couldn’t just lock the door and stay inside with them. Once they were in high school, we couldn’t protect them all the time. We needed to get them out of there and go somewhere safe.” After moving to Toronto, Agosu and
her children initially lived in a shelter for refugees downtown, before finding accommodations in North York, near The Salvation Army’s Yorkminster Citadel. While they had a roof over their heads, there was little under it, and that was where the Army stepped in. “Many families who come to us from the shelter start with nothing,” explains Liz Colley, community and family services manager at Yorkminster. “They don’t get any financial support for beds, furniture or anything like that.” “When I came to the Army in June 2018, Liz did her best to get us everything we needed,” says Agosu. “We received vouchers for clothing, shoes—even bedding and other household items.”
