Angel Tree

This year Our company took on the Salvation Army Angel Tree. In short they find children who are in need of gifts for Christmas. Some of the children are in orphanages or foster care, or maybe the parents are going through a hard time, or even a single parent. We don't really know the situation but we are assured from the Salvation army that they do a little research so that we are not being scammed. I'm not sure people would actually do that but people surprise me all the time. So as I went through the names trying to find a boy or a girl to get gifts for, I came across a girl named Kaylene. I liked the name. We even named our dog Kaylee. So the named jumped out to me cause I liked. She had a list of needs and wants on there and I considered them to be reasonable for a 12 year old girl.

I had many thoughts about who this little girl was. I wondered what was her situation, what does she really need, what does she really like. Shelly and I thought for a while trying to come up with things to get her. On her card she had listed:

Want: Video journal

Need: Jacket

then it listed her sizes so if we wanted we could buy clothes for her.

I thought that was neat, but a little more info about the girl would have been helpful. What does she like does she have a favorite color, does she like cartoon show or something? Here is an example if she like the Dallas Cowboys (okay not a great example) then I could get her a jacket with the Dallas Cowboys on it and she would just love it. Okay well anyway that's not the point of my post. I'm sure they do the best they can. So I tried to do the best I could. There was a 60-70 dollar range for the gifts you would buy. I though okay that sounds fair I guess. So we went shopping.

We ended up spending about $120 and were shocked that it added up so quickly. I guess your heart gets pretty big at Christmas time. As I thought about it more I realized what I had done. Since we have had 2 miscarriages this past year, I was substituting this girl as my own. My eyes were welling with tears as I talked to Shelly about. She then cried thinking about what we didn't have. We talked about it and decided to return some things. First of because we don't really have the money to be spending (we weren't spending that kind of money on our family's). Second because they had a limit in their original asking for someone to spend. We returned a few clothes and settled on about an $80 price range. Still over, but there were some things we felt we should get. So here's what we got her.

The video journal

new black fleece jacket w/ hoodie (girls love the hoodie)

Thumper pajamas

various candies in Christmas packaging ( Reese, Hershey, gummy life-savers)

Candy flavor lip gloss

A Bible (that's what it looked like)

Doesn't seem like much but the video journal was almost $30 and the bible was $25.

I wasn't sure about getting her a bible at first. I wondered if the Salvation army would approve, then I thought, I don't care. I felt that I should share the one gift that she needed. That is the gift that only God can give. I figured if the little girl was a Christian, how happy would she be when she got her own new bible that is leather and a pretty Burgundy. If she does not know Christ, then I must rely on God's Sovereignty to save her soul. We kept thinking, maybe we should write something in it or put some sort of list of verses for her to read. I did put her name in it and put the date and put that it was from the millers. After a while I wondered what should I have written that was not already written. How convincing can I be? Can I convince someone to choose Christ? Am I head of the Marketing department for Christ? Are we selling Jesus? (BTW this will another blog in the future)

I was reminded of this passage in Luke 16:29-30

But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'

So what I was able to give her was Moses and the prophets. I just pray that the Lord would reveal himself to her and she would come to know him through His word. This is all I can really do for her. Until she knows Christ she will never know true peace and love.