In earlier 2016, the Indo-Canadian Christian Fellowship group members from Saskatoon approached the Sai Centre to help them in an ongoing service activity.  We were approached saying “You SAI folks do service activities and wondering whether your group would be interested in a hands-on service that we like to add to an ongoing project”. The event was described as below by the group.

“The Love Lives Here” Bus Ministry run by Ebenezer church is a ministry for the homeless on the west side of the city. Currently families from the Indo-Canadian Christian Fellowship takes turns to supply them with sandwiches and muffins along with other items as the family may choose to take towards this service.  The food is served in a bus parked on 20^th street and Ave K, every Friday around 10 PM till midnight. Currently the Ministry likes to add warm, substantial and nutritious soup to their program. Initial estimate is that they will need ~10L and might require more up to 12L on certain months. The Ministry also take a break for few weeks here and there in summer time. It’s expected to serve up to 100 people and at times 150 people.

As this task need to be committed on a long-term weekly basis, the President of the Centre presented this service opportunity at the GBM in 2016. Being a small Centre, we didn’t have the capacity to sign up for all Fridays in a year. However, all the volunteer families who were willing and available were pooled together and committed to serve 30 weeks in the months of (2016 Sept -2017 Aug). With Swami’s grace the families were able to prepare and deliver hot nutritious soup as per the schedule committed, which were very much enjoyed and appreciated by the beneficiaries.

Moving forward we were able to increase the number of committed weeks to 38 in 2017-18 with the same number of families. However, our reports presented at the GBM in 2018, motivated more families to be part of this program.  By Swami’s divine grace we have filled up to 50 weeks for this year 2018-19 and looking forward to another great year on this activity.

We do get few requests during summer time from the Ministry to provide additional salad/sandwiches fruits etc. during their summer BBQ season and Sai families have participated in these activities as well. To summarize, approximately about 3-4 families participate each month in carrying out this project.  This program has been successful and appreciated a lot by the clients in Saskatoon.

The following are a few thank you notes from the Coordinator from the Ministry:

“To you and all the wonderful folks involved with the Sri Sathya Sai Baba Centre, my sincere THANK YOU! It is a blessing to be able to serve the less fortunate in life, and there is no better way to tell our Creator that we are thankful for the blessings he has bestowed on us”.

 “I am so thankful to the Sai Group for being a strong supporter of it.  I am sure hundreds of our homeless friends on the West side are even more grateful.  That being said, it is time for us to start planning for the next year, and I hope that the Sai Group plans on remaining involved in the project”.

This opportunity brought immense pleasure to the devotees in serving the under privileged, as they served to the long line of people waiting to get into the warm bus and to be handed a fresh bowl of warm soup.

The Saskatoon Sai Centre, sincerely thank Swami for the opportunity through the Ministry and to render this service along with other organizations.