Step into the chapel of Park Drive Church in the middle of the afternoon and you’ll find the sun streaming in through two gleaming stained glass windows.

Before he donated them to the church, Daniel Aguilera spent months creating them. Using soldering techniques, specially created paint and a curing process of his own, he spent months labouring through the stop-and-go process.

It was an involved and time-consuming project, but for Aguilera the windows allowed him to give something of himself back to the people who helped him when he needed it the most.

Aguilera was born in Argentina, but moved to Canada in the early 1990s to escape the revolution in his country. He spent most of that time in Western Canada, working in the telecommunications industry, but a few years ago that all changed.

After 25 years apart he was reunited with his childhood girlfriend—the love of his life—who is now his wife.

He tells a story about seeing her for the first time on Skype.

“I was wondering how she will look today. Maybe she will be fat, maybe she’ll look weird,” he recalled with a grin. “But she wasn’t. She was beautiful, like the way I remembered her.”

Aguilera said Elizabeth had been in his thoughts his entire life, and he was so happy to reconnect with her he briefly moved back to Argentina, before Elizabeth agreed to come live with him in Canada.

And it was her arrival here that brought the pair to Oliver. Aguilera explained that the bitter cold of Edmonton is no place for someone who’s lived their whole life in Argentina’s temperate climate, but he knew weather in the Okanagan was similar.

So two-and-a-half years ago he and Elizabeth moved here, arriving knowing no one, and with nothing more than a promise of work from Aguilera’s employer. But when that work never materialized, he and Elizabeth fell on very hard times.

“That’s when my nightmare started,” Aguilera said.

Without a job, they were forced into gruelling minimum wage jobs; planting tomatoes, harvesting grapes and other hard, physical labour.

They had almost nothing to their name, and the work, Aguilera said, was brutal. He recalled one day looking over at Elizabeth, who had left a house and well-paying job in Argentina to be with him, in a country where she could barely speak the language, and feeling despair.

“I was looking at her and I thought, how can I bring her from her standard of living and bring her for this?”

It was during these hard times that Pastor Bart Thomas and the community at Park Drive Church stepped in, welcoming the pair into their family and making sure they got by during the hardest times.

“I’ve had very nice moments in this church with these people,” Aguilera said as he walked through the chapel. “They gave us great welcome as a family.”

“We were completely not known in this community,” he continued, but being a part of the church made them feel like they belonged.

It was during that early time that he made a promise to Thomas, telling him that some day, when he was able, he was going to repay him and the church for all the kindness.

As he met Thomas under one of the stained glass windows, Aguilera’s gratitude was evident.

“This is a nice place to be, and that’s the nicest person I’ve met in my life,” he said enthusiastically, clapping Thomas on the shoulder.

Thomas looked at the ground and smiled, slightly shaking his head.

“The feeling is mutual,” he said. “We enjoy each other’s company and we have a lot of fun.”

Thomas gushed about the Aguilera’s windows, pointing how beautiful they were and what a stark addition to the church they were. He said the windows represented everything the church was about.

“Daniel helps people, we help people, we’re all just helping people,” he said, then gesturing to Aguilera. “It’s good to see people find a place where they can express their gifts. And this guy is very gifted.”

Aguilera accepted the praise graciously, but said the most important thing was simply that he was able to give back. “I feel very good because in some way I returned what they gave me: I’ve given them something from my heart, like they gave me.”

By Trevor Nichols