nairb

Angel Tree Give Away

Yesterday our Church handed out gifts from our Angel Tree. This was our second year doing such a thing. Last year seemed chaotic and it was. We had around 200 Angels last year. We all expected to double that this year with about 500. The night of the sign-up God challenged us. We ended up with over 950 signed up the night of the stew supper. To be honest I never imagined that we could do it. I felt like we struggled to get 200 kids taken care of the year before. This one is a real testament to the folks at our Church. The final Angel number was right around 1050.

Presents had been rolling in the last few weeks. Yesterday morning when I arrived at Church, the place was packed. There were toys everywhere. I have never seen so many bikes in one spot. There were toys lining the halls. There were toys on the stage in the auditorium. There were in the chapel. About 1/3 of the foyer was filled with toys.

Volunteer began at noon getting the toys staged. They were placed by Angel number in most of the classrooms and the chapel. At three pm Bobby gave a briefing to the volunteers that would work getting toys to the parents, helping wrap those toys, retrieving toys from the rooms and watching children while the parents did their thing.

Send a big thanks to Jennifer N who did almost everything leading up to the event. She was a picture of organization. She worked tirelessly on this project.

The drawback..
There were a few parents who caused problems. There was one returned to say that there was nothing attached to the angel tag and demanded she be given something of value to fill that void. She doesn't know that while I was at the front door letting people in I saw here detach the tag from its gift before returning to the building to complain. There were others who even got belligerent about what the child received. Others showed up for gifts that never signed up in the first place. To all of the above, I would tell our member's, "So what?". There will always be these people. Of course we gave them what we could to make them happy. In the end, they were.

The 6 o'clock crowd...
We had many show up that couldn't sign up before. They were told to come back at six. Everything should have been picked up by then. If it hadn't we'd help them out as well. We did. A couple of ladies made a last minute run to Wal-Mart, just to have those extra gifts. It reminds me of the parable of the field worker. They were late in coming, didn't put in the work of the others, but received the same pay. This was a truly thank group of people.

Don't let the negative side stick in your mind...
You should read this last paragraph nearly a thousand times or more. When dealing with over a thousand people, there are going to be bad eggs. Most of the people were thankful and gracious. One many hugged everyone on his way out. I saw him hug and personally thank at least eight people in the Children's area. The best gift of this doesn't belong to the parents anyway. In the end it is all about the kids.

Pictures Here!

posted by nairb @ 8:20 AM