SUBMITTED BY: Misty
We have a large family! Christmas can easily get out of hand so it was decided that the adults would bring money instead of gifts and we would bless someone else.
We had to get organized! Each year one family would pick the project and present it to the group so the grandkids could understand. We heard about an organization that made wheelchairs for people in third world countries out of the white plastic lawn chairs. Our goal was to buy one wheelchair representing each person at our house on Christmas morning—22 were there that year. We made it!
Now we had a bigger goal for the next year—clean water. We learned about 5-gallon bucket water filtration systems. We each set out our Christmas collection jars. Our friends started to ask questions; they wanted in on it, too. We got one of the bucket filters, learned how they worked, and drank the mud! That year when our friends and family collected the jars and counted the money on Christmas morning, we had enough to dig a well! We were able to bless an entire village!
We have a lot of babies so we found out about giving birthing kits to new mothers. There wasn’t a dry eye Christmas morning when we discovered what they were given: to create a clean environment was a sheet of plastic with a bottle of water to wash your hands. The other items in the kit were everyday objects for us but were hard to come by for the 100 new moms and babies we were able to bless!
Have we missed out? No! On Christmas morning when it is time to pass the basket around, there is never a dry eye; and waiting for the final count has us all wide-eyed and filled with anticipation.
