It's Been a Great Christmas Already

It's already been a great Christmas for me already.

Over the past four years, the highlight of my Christmas has been a Christmas Eve outreach for the homeless. I'm not doing that this year, and I was feeling kind of down, like I should be doing something to help someone. That's become a very important part of my life, not just at Christmas.

This past weekend, I joined my City on a Hill (COAH) Connection friends doing an outreach in Fort Worth. One of the ladies we met, mentioned her son. He lost his job and hasn't been able to find one. The situation is tough. He was a contract worker, so he can't get any unemployment. He's been sending out resumes, filling in applications, including a local McDonalds and still nothing. He is married and has two little boys who weren't going to have Christmas. Their grandmother is helping all she can, but she lives paycheck to paycheck as well.

My family and I, along with Adam and Diane had the priviledge of helping this family out. We bought toys for the kids, and groceries - a lot of groceries. In addition we were able to get them a gift card so they could get anything additional they needed. I also prayed for healing for the oldest son who was sick.

As I was about to leave, the Father said he had to "shake my hand," though we had earlier.
I was told when I turned away to head out the door, there were tears in his eyes.

One more "big give" left. We are giving small gifts to all of the residents in the my grand mother's nursing home. I'm really looking forward to it.

In both of these, I've been joined by my mom and my sister and it has been great as we got into it together. I didn't ask them to, but they wanted to get involved. My sister even suggested maybe next year we should just to one present each - and spend the additional money to help another family.

Strange, it now feels like the regular Christmas gift giving will be "nice" but not all that significant. My family and I have had a great Christmas together already.