Big Give

Last night we helped out at our church's Big Give for christmas.  The church partners with the county to find families who need a little extra help during this time of year.  Once they have a list of names, church members have the opportunity to "adopt" a family.  They are then responsible for buying the gifts on the family's list.  Each member can adopt as a family, as part of a group, or partner with another family or two to help defray the cost.  Rob and I were in the Royal Rangers group since the boys decided to adopt one as a way to earn a leadership and community service badge and Rob is one of the R.R leaders.  Each group is then assigned a number for their family and is responsible for setting up and decorating a christmas tree that the family or families woud meet at.  We had four families in our group.
I have to admit that at first I was frustrated with the way things were going and complained that it would just be easier to have a giving tree where I could just pick a name off.  It was quite disorganized at first, we didn't get any information until Thursday of last week as to who we were to buy for, and then once we had bought the presents we found out that some things had already been donated and gifts were crossed off of our list so I had to take things back that I had already bought.
After being there last night I take back every bad thing I said.  When we arrived we volunteered to help greet the families and then Rob, Cerah, Morgan, Hannah, and I were responsible for writing out the name tags as every guest had to have one ( I think we wrote out over 200 name tags).  Once it had slowed down and the guests went to the sanctuary for the first part of the evening we only had a few who were still in the foyer.  One young mother stayed out with her children as she had a little 15 month old who didn't want to sit still.  It turns out that she was one of the families assigned to our group. 

Here is Cerah using her puppet to play with the little girl.  She was giggling so hard and kept putting her hands in the puppet's mouth to see what it would do.

This is the tree we were assigned.  We actually shared it with the Pastor's wife and she is the one who decorated it.

Cerah playing around with the puppet.

One of the families in our group

Another one of the families in our group

Opening Christmas gifts.  I loved watching the smiles on their faces

Same little girl Cerah was playing with holding onto her new baby doll.

One of the boys from our assigned families receiving an Ipod Shuffle. His mom started crying when she saw what he got.

A view of the gym where the trees were all set up

Another view with more people

There was a lot of praying going on last night

Santa made an appearance in his sleigh.  What a big smile from a happy boy

After all the families had received their presents the children were allowed to go to the "extra" tree and pick out a couple more gifts if they wanted to.

As you can see, they all got some pretty good stuff!

Watching these families open their gifts, and knowing that because of the generosity of the church so many kids and adults had a christmas this year, I was overwhelmed with emotion.  Never before, even with my own kids, has watching somebody open gifts been more meaningful and special as it was last night.  Even with all the frustration with the process I would do it again in a heartbeat.