Rejoice Jordan, a Pan Pacific banquet waitress and mother of three, relied on the help of the Lower Mainland Christmas Office after COVID took away her and her husband’s livelihood.
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Christmas is a time of joy for the Rejoice Jordan family, with everyone getting into the spirit gracing the aisles and dreaming of sugar plums.
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“We love Christmas,” says Jordan. “We love to bake, we love everything about Christmas. My daughter loves this time of year. He loves helping me bake. And my kids don’t wait for the cooking to come out of the oven. “
Part of their ritual each year was to attend the Pan Pacific Christmas Toy Drive Breakfast. Hundreds of holiday donors armed with an unwrapped toy would flock down to the downtown hotel and exchange it for breakfast.
Jordan was there every year, but on the other end of one of the largest toy drives in the Greater Vancouver area.
“Usually I’m the one preparing the food and working at the coffee station, serving coffee, coffee, coffee,” says Jordan, a banquet waiter.
“It is so nice to see the love that everyone has. It helps you get in a good mood. “
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But COVID collapsed all of that and Jordan was among the thousands of hospitality workers in British Columbia and around the world who were unable to switch to a home office. Even if she and others were willing to travel to work, there was no work to be done.
She and her husband, whose work is also based on events and meetings of people, were, after almost a year without work, without cash for Christmas.
“I was very stressed as work closed and things got worse and worse,” says Jordan. “It has been a long time (without work). It feels like two years of my life are missing. “
She trusted the charity offered by the Lower Mainland Christmas Office, one of the many charities supported by donations to The Province Empty Stocking Fund.
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“It helped me a lot,” he says. “The Christmas Office is just amazing. I’m thankful.”
His daughter received the little starter sewing machine she wanted for Christmas, and his sons used the gift cards to buy electronics and headphones, a welcome gift for the whole family in their apartment in the Olympic Village.
Instead of food baskets, the office distributed gift cards to grocery stores, and Jordan’s baking went according to plan.
“That is our tradition,” she says. “We bake for two weeks. We love baking cookies, cakes, and chocolate muffins. “
Pan Pacific is offering some work this month and things are looking brighter with the return of the meetings.
Jordan isn’t sure the family needs help, perhaps a grocery gift card.
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Her 10-year-old daughter watches her friends and classmates go on trips and receive gifts, and “I can see that it bothers her a bit.”
“But she said, ‘I’m fine, Mom.’ She is very clever and does things around the house. And we can bake. We have a beautiful Christmas tree ”and each year the children make a new ornament.
Jordan was surprised by the cold when he emigrated with his family at age seven, landing in snowy Edmonton when the most ice he had ever seen before was in a snow cone.
“From Ghana to Edmonton, it was very difficult to adapt,” he says. But now I love snow. I love to skate and we make snow angels and we have snowball fights ”when it snows or when they take a trip to Grouse Mountain.
“You get on the bus and it changes and you can see snow in the mountains.”
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Last year, the office organized a toy delivery on the PNE grounds and Jordan was among the fired Pan Pacific staff who helped collect the donations, which were distributed under COVID protocols.
“We have some obvious challenges,” says CEO Chris Bayliss. The number of toys collected for the office, which it distributes to other BC offices, dropped in 2020 by 25,000 from 2019.
But “no family was turned away,” he says. This year, as in most years, the office needs gifts suitable for teens and tweens.
Jordan says he can’t wait until the toy drive returns to the Pan Pacific. Her daughter said she wants to be able to buy gifts so she can donate them.
“It’s a great way to give back,” says Jordan. “That is the best gift you can give someone, give it to those who need help. It could be you. “
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Reference-theprovince.com