The week leading up to Thanksgiving is always hectic. Shopping, baking, cleaning, and packing all for the sake of celebrating a day of thanks with those closest to you. However, for the Castle family of Chestermere, they spent that most of that week at the Alberta Children’s Hospital sitting at the bedside of their son, Lucas. Since birth, Lucas has suffered from tuberous sclerosis, which is a rare multi-system genetic disease that causes Lucas to have benign tumours on his brain and heart.
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, four year old Lucas passed out during his preschool class and was taken to the Alberta Children’s Hospital via ambulance. Upset and anxious parents, Rob & Jody, spent those next few days sitting with Lucas and were forced to make the hard decision to cancel their plans to fly back to Ontario to visit family for the Thanksgiving weekend. With broken hearts, they cancelled their flights and made the disappointing phone call to Rob’s parents, Phil and Gwen Castle, letting them know that they would not be able to make the trip and sharing the news of young Lucas’ being in the hospital.
What made this even more devastating for the Castle family was that this was the third vacation that they have had to cancel last minute – but with this being just a simple trip to go back home to see family at Thanksgiving, it was even a bigger blow. But when they then called close friend Evan Dewald, Pastor of Lake Ridge Community Church, and shared their disappointing news, what happened next was something the Castle family never expected.
Evan jumped into action and decided that if the Castle family couldn’t make it out to Ontario to see their family, he was going to bring that family to them. With a simple Facebook message to members of the Lake Ridge Community Church a plan was set into motion to somehow save the Castles’ Thanksgiving. A call was made to Phil and Gwen Castle and tickets were purchased to fly them here to see their heartbroken Chestermere family. The Lake Ridge community rallied, donations poured in that not only covered the cost of the tickets, but left a little extra to be put to good use helping other members in of the community in need.
The next step was to try and figure out how to have the surprise unfold once the Ontario Castle’s arrived. “At this point, Lucas was still in the hospital so the plan was to tell Rob and Jody that we were coming to the hospital to hold a prayer gathering on Saturday morning – but then we learned that Lucas was released from the hospital on Friday evening….. so now what,” tells Evan Dewald. “So we made a few changes to our plan and told Rob and Jody that we were going to move the ‘prayer gathering’ to their home on Saturday morning, and they agreed.”
So bright and early on that Saturday morning, Phil and Gwen Castle landed at YYC and were quickly taken directly to the home where their unsuspecting family awaited. They stood on the doorstep, knocked on the door and a shocked Rob opened the door to see his loving parents there to celebrate Thanksgiving. As they entered the home and Jody realized that they had company, her eyes flooded with tears and it was hugs all around.
“That whole week had been extremely emotional with Lucas in the hospital and having to cancel our plans to go home. It is unbelievable how many people got involved to help bring Rob’s parents here. This was very special and over whelming. Even though we are far away from home, we are very well taken care of here in Chestermere,’ explained Jody.
The Castle grandparents were only able to stay until Monday evening but even though it was a short visit, it was one that Rob and Jody will never forget.
“We see the Castles’ as our family,” Pastor Dewald explains. “This was a true act of love and as much as we consider them our family, sometimes you just need your mom.”
Dewald went on to say that throughout the organizing of this amazing surprise, the motivation was to bring happiness and some peace to Rob and Jody and their family, but what he discovered was that this was also a huge relief to Robs’ parents and a remarkable way to give back for the members of Lake Ridge Community Church that participated.
