Archives for December 2015

I don’t have any pictures for this blog.  It just isn’t right to take pictures of handing out a small gift to someone in hard times.

Usually we go out Christmas Eve afternoon and find homeless to hand them to.  This year Jason worked until 2.  By the time he got home and I finished the baking, we barely made it to the 6 pm Christmas Eve service.

So, we decided to drive around downtown I hopes of finding 15 people to bless.  And indeed we did manage to find some. It was a rougher crowd this year, since it was cold and late and most were inside for the night in the various shelters.

We did however  find some really needy people to bless.  We had 2 warm blankets and we gave them to the first 2 people we saw hunkered down for the night.

Kieran got a talking to from a gentleman who had already been generous with the liquor.  He was told about 50x to stay in school until he was 25.  But I was super proud of Kieran.  He looked this gentleman in the eye the entire time and he shook his hand several times.  And although even I was uncomfortable he didn’t show it to this gentleman.

We found a couple sleeping in front of the bottle depot doors with 4 baskets of bottles.  They said they’d have to stay there for 2 days.  They weren’t willing to let the bottles go so they could have a warm place to sleep.  We gave them each a bag.

We found a gentleman who was trying to stay away from security and we blessed him too.

Karyssa and I blessed a gentleman who was trying to get to the Drop in Center.  He was a couple blocks away.  He fell over twice and we helped him back up and by the time we were across the street from the Center with him, helping him stay on his feet, a worker from the Drop In saw and came and helped him the rest of the way.  The worker knew him by name and helped him.

Fifteen people were the recipients of our gifts tonight.

However, the real blessing was all ours.  We left feeling humble and grateful for all we have.  We wished we could have done more.  Every year it is the same.  And somehow every year we manage to do a little bit more.

But this year our gifts went to the most desperate of the homeless.  And it sure felt great to be able to help and see how  the warm socks and blankets and cookies were sure appreciated.

Tonight the kids and I wrapped the last of the gifts.

Theirs have been wrapped for awhile.

However, we had the box of gifts for the homeless to wrap.  We needed to sort out the warm socks and the gift cards for meals and the gift cards for hot drinks.  We needed to figure out how many gifts and how large each gift would be.

We decided on 15 gifts.  So we sorted through and found a brand new reusable travel mug for each gift.  We added a gift card for hot drinks and a gift card for food.  Finally we added warm socks.  A few got a little extra.  We had one brand new fleece jacket and 2 soft warm brand new blankets.  We had some candies too and a few other miscellaneous things like toothpaste and hand cream and soap.

When everything was all sorted we found we were a little bit short of what I would have liked, but not much.  And really we had made the gifts extra generous anyway.  Still I really wanted to make sure each gift had at least $10 to $15 in gift cards for hot drinks to somewhere like Starbucks or Tim Hortons as well as $15 to $25 in food gift certificates for McDonald’s or Subway or something.  In the end we were 2 coffee cards short and 4 meal cards.

That’s when our oldest son stepped up.  He had said he wanted to do something to contribute and I suggested he wait to decide what until we finished wrapping the gifts.

He decided he would buy 1 coffee card and 4 meal cards.  And when he was trying to decide if he could afford to do the final coffee card…my youngest son said he wanted to help his brother and he would buy it.  After much discussion about how this shouldn’t be to help his brother, but should be to help the homeless he decided he was still going to buy a gift card.

So tomorrow I will take my excited 7 year old to buy a gift card out of his own money…his birthday money.  And my 16 year old is going to also buy some gift cards out of his own money from his job.

Tomorrow the kids will each make 3 personal Christmas cards to add to the gifts.  And then they will get to give away the gifts that have their cards in them.

Some days I know I’m raising the kids right!

I can’t wait until Christmas Eve when we get to find people to personally give them to.  The kids love that part the most!  (And so do I!)