Article by Ashleigh Viveiros (Winkler Morden Voice)
A father and son shared their family’s story of overcoming fear with a rapt crowd at the Pembina Counselling Centre’s spring fundraiser last week.
The Apr 9 event, dubbed When The Heart Trembles, filled the sanctuary at the Winkler MB Church with PCC supporters eager to hear about Daren and Abishai Redekopp’s journey of hope and healing.
Two years ago, Abishai suffered a heart attack while playing with his brothers at Emerado Park. Staff at the nearby school sprung quickly into action, performing life-saving measures on the teen until emergency crews arrived.
It was a harrowing experience, shared Daren, one that was followed by additional heart attacks in the months afterwards. It left Abishai afraid to overexert himself for fear of triggering another incident.
“It’s like he has a bomb in his chest, and he doesn’t know what might set it off,” Daren recalled. “And neither do we. It’s terrifying. How far can he walk? How fast can he climb the stairs? How often? He doesn’t know, and not knowing paralyzes him.”
The once active youth struggled to leave the house, fearful of what could happen. He quit his job and stopped playing the sports he loved.
“His world keeps getting smaller and smaller, shrinking each week until he’s every day in the house, touching his chest, checking for that feeling [of an impending attack], always afraid that something’s going to happen,” Daren said.
This situation left its mark on Daren and his wife Renae as well, as they relived the terror of nearly losing their son multiple times, including one attack in which they had to perform CPS on him in the backyard while waiting for the device doctors has installed in his heart o begin working. “During the day, Renae jumps at every little sound in the house, keeps running to see that he’s okay,” Daren shared. “At night, I have nightmares about him falling, trying to grab at his hand. Our whole family felt maimed,” he said. “Like a great limb of a tree had been lopped off. How do you fix that? All we could do was pray.”
The family found strength in their faith in God and in the outpouring of support they received from the community.
About a month before the first heart attack, Daren had left his job as a pastor of a church in Morden. He planned to take a few months off before pursuing what might come next, and the family was living on their savings in the meantime.
“So there we were: no job, no family [in the area], and I had just left our church, facing the greatest crisis we’d ever known. We had nothing. Nobody. And then this community showed up, literally at our door. Gifts of food, meal cards, gifts of money, prayer, phone calls, visits in the Winnipeg hospitals.”
It was an overwhleming experience to be on the receiving end of so much kindness and generosity, Daren observed, but Abishai still struggled to find his way back to some sense of normalcy.
“Chris Derksen [PCC Executive Director] suggested we have Abisha try counselling. It sounded like a good idea, only we didn’t have the money,” he said. “‘That’s okay,’ Chris said. ‘We have a program for that.'”
Thanks to the community donations, the non-profit is able to offer individuals and families who need help a sliding-fee scale based on their income or circumstances – no one is turned away because they are unable to pay.
Abishai’s sessions with his PCC counsellor helped him learn how to overcome the feat that had gripped him. Today he’s pursuing post-secondary education, and has made the dean’s honour roll. He’s slowly reclaiming the things he loves to do in life.
Abishai shared a reading of Isaiah 61:3, which speaks of divine comfort and healing, of God’s ability to transform something that has been destroyed into a thing of beauty and joy.
“That passage … uses the metaphor of a tree for people who have suffered loss,” he said. “When a tree loses a limb, no expects that it will grow the limb back. it cannot. What the tree can do is grow around its wound, making the best of its situation, taking account of itself and its environment. It is resilient. So while it may never again be what it was before, that tree can still grow. That tree has a future.
“In the same way, as I grow beyond the person whose hear seized up that day, my focus isn’t to try to go back and become who I was, but to continue to grow as the soul I am now, to listen to my gardener and the direction He has for me.
“Sometimes, when bad things happen to us, the people who love us want more than anything to see us go back to the way that we were. But that may not be what God wants for us – maybe what God wants for us is to keep growing despite our lost limbs,” Abishai said. “If you’re experiencing deep loss, emotional abuse, physical abuse, or even a disease, what I want you to know is that does not make you a forever broken person. Although you cannot go back, you can still grow.”
Daren and Abishai’s full presentation is available to watch here on Pembina Counselling Centre’s Youtube page.
Hearing stores like this directly from PCC families highlights the importance of the work of the non-profit, reflected Executive Director, Chris Derksen.
“I can talk to you about stats and numbers … I can share with you that in the last five years we’ve gone from just over 2,000 appointments per year to nearly 6,000 appointments at the end of 2025,” he told the assembled supporters. “I can share with you that we’ve gone from three counsellors to nine in the last five years.” But the centre is about so much more than numbers, Derksen stressed. “What hasn’t changed since the beginning of time is people’s need for hope,” he noted. “We see it every day at PCC. People wrestling with their marriages, anxiety, fear, and all kinds of personal struggles. And that’s really why Pembina Counselling Centre exists. “We’re here to walk with people through these moments, to help them find direction, and to bring hope into situations that feel overwhelming.”
PCC’s staff do that from a Christian perspective, but Derksen stressed the centre “is a place where everyone is welcome. We don’t discriminate, and we do not impose our beliefs on those that we serve. Our role is to meet people where they’re at, to care for them, and to create a safe space where they can process their story and move forward.”
“What makes PCC possible is the uniqueness of the Pembina Valley, a community marked by generosity, by compassion, by faith, and a genuine care for others,” Derksen said. “It is because of this community that we are able to serve as we do, ensuring that people can access support regardless of their financial situation.”