'They Saved a Soul'

As soon as the service at Dresden (Ont.) Christian Reformed Church finished, Jean Dupuis slipped out the door and made a beeline for her car.

She hadn’t gone far, however, when she she felt someone lay a hand on her shoulder — an unexpected encounter that led to a connection to a congregation that opened its arms to her and in the process helped transform her life.

As Dupuis recalls that day outside of church, she was worried that she had done something wrong. All she had wanted to do over the past few weeks was to attend and leave the service without attracting attention.

But apparently someone had noticed her. Reluctantly she turned and, said Dupuis, “found a very tall, very sweet, very loving woman standing there who asked me to please stay for coffee.”

Wondering what might be the catch, what this woman hoped to gain from her, Depuis wanted to refuse. But the woman was so gracious, said Dupuis, that she accepted and returned to the church for coffee.

“Right away, I met people who were so kind. They weren’t fake, and I didn’t expect that,” she said.

That was nearly five years ago, not long after Dupuis had returned to Dresden with her life in shambles. She had worked for years in Las Vegas casinos but had left as things fell apart and she needed a change.

Hopes of living with her daughter in Oregon dissolved for different reasons, and she eventually found herself in the Dresden, Ont., apartment building in which her mother and aunt had lived years earlier. It was the only place she could call home, though she had little money to pay for it and it fostered bad memories of living in Dresden in the past.

“I didn’t have anything to my name. I didn’t even have a fork,” she said. “I was at rock bottom. I hit hard and didn’t want to take another breath.”

In a letter she sent earlier this year to Rev. Darren Roorda, Canadian Ministries director of the CRC, Dupuis recounted that bleak time. But she also told Roorda — and this is why she sent her letter of gratitude in the first place — of how Dresden CRC reached out and taught her about the Bible and about God, and helped to mend her life.

“I would never have known God’s unconditional love if not for Dresden Christian Reformed Church,” she wrote to Roorda. “I want to say thank you to the CRC. You have changed my future. I just wanted you to know that they not only saved a life; they saved a soul.”

Roorda was moved by the letter and was pleased to learn how Dresden CRC has affected Dupuis’s life.

“What is important to note about Jean's story is that the church is being missional not through a program so much as by being hospitable and applying hospitality to how their church already functions,” said Roorda. “It is good to see that Jean experienced hospitality in Dresden.”

By her own admission, DuPuis has had a highly unusual life, starting off by being one of 13 children of a man who had two separate families, one in the U.S. and the other in Canada, where Dupuis lived.

As a child, she bounced around from place to place and found herself homeless and pregnant at the age of 16. It was then that she had her first significant experience with a church. Needing help, she went to a Catholic church, but that church turned her away because she was pregnant and, she said, considered “unclean.”

Although that church’s refusal to help may have been an isolated case, it hurt deeply. And for more than 40 years afterward she never entered a church, although she had faith in Jesus throughout that time, she said.

After broken relationships and many tough experiences over the years, DuPuis returned about five years ago to Dresden and eventually found the church that she didn’t know she had been looking for all along, It was Dresden CRC, not far from the apartment where she lives.

“I knew I was mad at God, and I wanted to find a church where I could go and tell him that. I wanted to yell at him,” she said. “I knew God was out there.”

When she spotted Dresden CRC, tucked away in a neighborhood, she immediately recognized the church name as the same that had held a barbeque at her apartment complex that summer.

“They were very nice people,” she wrote in her letter to Roorda. “I went online and researched this beautiful little church. On their website I was able to listen to services done by Pastor John [Moelker]. I could hear the members singing too.”

With little else to do, she spent several days watching videos of the services and listening to the sermons, which seemed to be aimed right at her, she said.

Dupuis eventually worked up the nerve to walk into the church and sat quietly in the back just as a Sunday service started. Quickly, she said, her desire to yell at God vanished and in its place came something hard to express.

“I will never be able to find words to explain how it felt being there that day,” she wrote Roorda. “But God was there, and the warmth of that church and people — well, it was just wonderful.”

As she has grown more deeply involved in the church, Dupuis has attended Bible studies and has talked endlessly with the pastor about many things, she said — and now she volunteers at a thrift store the church runs to raise money for a local Christian school.

Meanwhile, the church has encouraged her and stood by her as she finished her high school education. Many church members were even on hand for her graduation.

In addition, a couple from the church stepped in and offered to help pay for her to work on a degree in gerontology at a nearby community college.

Dupuis is currently starting her second semester in her second year of a three-year program, and she is planning to work in some way with senior citizens when she finishes college.

As hard as her life has been, said DuPuis, she has two children and six grandsons “who are the love of my life” and give her great joy.

And then there is Dresden CRC. “Ever since I started going to the church, I’ve gotten stronger and stronger,” said Dupuis. “The people at the church are such incredible people who don’t seem to understand that their reflection is so bright.”

John Moelker, the pastor at Dresden CRC, said DuPuis often talks like it’s been one-way street, with only the church giving to her, but she doesn’t seem to realize what many in the church have received in return.

“Jean has a refreshing perspective on church and kingdom life that has had a transformative effect on this church family,” he said.

“I believe God sent Jean to help us see the ways in which simple and ordinary things, that we take for granted, are kingdom things. God is using Jean to help us recognize these little joyful births and to be encouraged by them.”