Our Angel Tree Child

Mid-November Himself and I headed off to Wal-Mart to finish out shopping for our Christmas Child shoeboxes. Since it was raining, he dropped me at the door first then parked.

While I was waiting for him I amused myself by looking at the tags on the Salvation Army Angel Tree. On the tags the kids listed 2 “wishes”. Most were wanting bikes, IPod players, Game Boxes, etc. Then I saw one little guy (7) who wanted Transformers and a Bible. Can you believe it?!?!?! He wanted a Bible!
Guess who we came home with?

I had so much fun shopping for young Jacob! The first week of December, we went to LifeWay store to pick out a child's Bible, one with lots of good pictures and easy text. Then on to Wal-Mart to go Transformer shopping. I was guided by the Pirates over the cell phone as to what was a "cool" (i.e. desirable) Transformer, since apparently there are Transformers that are on the minus scale in the cool factor. As we exited the toy section a few things for a stocking jumped into our cart. Couldn't fight them off! In the clothes section we picked up a pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, a hoodie and a warm coat. Then one more thing jumped in the cart...a pair of Transformers" pajamas. I used to get a new pair of PJs for Christmas Eve (I'm sure so I'd look good for the pictures the next morning!) and I wanted to do this for Jacob. Last stop was to the Dollar Tree to finish out shopping for stocking goodies. Gotta have stocking goodies!
All this stuff we packed into a giant Christmas bag and carried it over to the Salvation Army office.

Have to back up a moment here. Earlier we decided we would like to provide a Christmas meal for a family. Shortly after that, I received an "honorarium" check for a missions presentation I did at a church in another county. So we are using that to get the meal fixings. Question was...who to do the meal for!

We were so pleased with Jacob that we decided to ask at the Salvation Army if his family would like to be the recipient of the meal. As their reply, they handed me a sticky with the contact info for the family.

OK...that was a little strange! I expected them to make the contact and we bring the food to the office for the family to pick up. So I placed the call, tho it made me feel a bit weird. Here I am a stranger calling and saying "I want to buy your family's Christmas dinner fixings".

I introduced myself as the person who had put together Jacob's "angel gift" and immediately "Mama Jacob" started saying how much she appreciated it...everything was perfect...she had wanted to send a thank you but the Salvation Army wouldn't give her our address (which they don't have!)...and so on.

'Mama Jacob' told me that one element of my gift had been straight from the Lord. Those PJs! The kids sleep in a T-shirt and unders, and don't have real pajamas. Well, Jacob's grade level at school had "Pajama Day" where the kids could wear PJs to school. He really wanted to do it...but he didn't have any PJs and they could not afford to get him a pair. Then they picked up the Angel Tree bags and she found in Jacob's bag those Transformer PJs that had jumped into my cart! She said he was so happy.

Once I got to the reason for my call -- Christmas dinner -- she started crying. We talked over a menu, and I found out that Jacob's favorite thing is 'mashed potatoes and gravy'. And we planned a time for us to deliver it. I contacted a few of my girlfriends with kids/grandkids and asked what would be some special things for a kid to have at Christmas. Got some fantastic ideas...refrigerator sugar cookies and a variety of sprinkles to make as a family, several suggestions of boxed mac & cheese, pig-in-a-blanket munchies, jelly cranberry sauce...and others.

We delivered the food today. It was a wonderful visit, and we were invited to their church tonight to see Jacob in the Christmas pageant.

And so we went. It was a simple presentation of carols by the children who were dressed in "Biblical" costumes. Kids squirmed, forgot their lines, waved at parents, played with their costumes...in other words, it was a lot of FUN!!!

And the most important thing, they were celebrating the birth of Christ!