Bless a Family: Young Adults Deliver Gifts to Local Family

by Heather Myer

Our collective gifts offering looked quite impressive beside Heather and Dallas’s fireplace. Paul, Heather, Dallas, and I gathered our community group’s collected Christmas offering and put it in the back of Heather G’s car as we chatted about our workweeks and plans for the holidays. My family is in California, and this is my first holiday season without them. For Thanksgiving, I was so incredibly blessed as several friends and co-workers adopted me during the week of Thanksgiving. I made off with not one, but seven Thanksgiving dinners! Christmas was looking a bit bleaker, yet I knew that God would provide.

The previous month, Paul and I had delivered a Thanksgiving meal to the Travers, but this night I had forgotten bits of how to get to their home. Luckily, he knew exactly which directions to follow. I am easily lost, so I was glad he came with us. As we left the city limits and drove out into the country, I noticed the stars were visible against the dark sky, and we gazed in awe at them. I have not seen the stars since my family sold our property last spring, and the stars are simply not visible against the Springfield city lights. We reflected on the beauty of God’s creation, and soon, we approached the road leading to the Travers' home. Trees barren of leaves lined the gravel road that twisted before us.

At the house, we gathered our gift offerings and tentatively knocked on the Travers’ front door. A small girl with long dark hair darted out, without socks or slippers on her feet. She gave us a shy smile and then looked up at me and said, “I remember you!” She hugged me around my waist as I danced to keep the packages from falling. “Hello, Deb!” I replied and returned her hug. We entered the warm home and saw a man and a boy watching TV. My mind immediately went blank, but Heather G. saved the moment, greeting each person in the room by their first names. Heather’s social graces never fail to impress me. She only knew the family by e-mail, yet she knew their names by heart when she met them for the first time in person. “Gerald, how’s it going?” “And you must be Shane!” she said to a petite 18-year-old girl who was knitting a stocking in the corner of the room. The four of us went back to the car for another armload of presents, and we placed them on the floor beside a small gathering of presents. The family did not have a tree.

We had an enjoyable time with the family. Dallas spoke with the father, Paul with Gerald, and Deb and the Heathers admired Shane’s stocking. Shane looked as if she had barely turned 14, and she told us that she was from Florida and that her parents divorced and that she is living with her mother and stepfather. Gerald and Deb are from their father’s prior marriage and the three of them have been together almost a year now. Shane had created an impressive stocking and showed us a ski cap complete with snowflakes! Heather immediately ordered two stockings and ski caps and offered a generous sum in return. I was again impressed by HG’s kindness and genuine spirit. I also ordered mittens from Shane.

The children shared their pets with us: two dogs, nine cats, and two geckos, and we were impressed by the multitude of their animals. The cats were each named after a seasoning: Basil, Sage, Marjoram, etc. while the geckos were dubbed such names as Honey Bear and Baby Doll. The dogs were labeled Scooter and Clifford. It humored me. Paul took Deb aside and asked her if she had painted the landscape painting behind the couch. Deb blushed and shook her head. She then tugged his sleeve and pointed at a watercolor on the refrigerator. Paul acted amazed at her artistic abilities and begged Deb to paint one for him. She blushed and quickly shook her head and shyly dashed behind her brother.

Dallas offered up a Christmas prayer for the family. The girls gave us all hugs and Gerald and Mr. Travers shook our hands. Before I turned to leave, Shane and Deb tugged at my sleeve. “Heather, are you a doctor?” I was still wearing my scrubs from work and my stethoscope was peaking out of my lab coat. I smiled and knelt down beside the girls. “No, I’m a nurse.” “Oh, well, could you please, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you please wish all the new babies at the nursery a Merry Christmas from me and Deb?” I was touched. I smiled and nodded, accepting her Christmas tidings. How sweet a request! Neither of the girls had on slippers or jackets, and both shivered in the cold and huddled near me for warmth. Deb threw her arms around my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “You are a nice lady. Thank you.”

I fought to keep back the tears that welled up as I returned to the car to join the Gilions and Paul. Once I was safe in the darkness of the night, I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. I realized that I truly was blessed as a child and that this very evening was God’s Christmas present to me. I meekly thanked Paul, Dallas, and Heather for joining me and said a silent prayer for the dear, sweet children. We were all silent on the way home as we reflected upon the evening, but after a few moments I broke the silence by proclaiming, “They thought I was a doctor!” The others turned to me, amused. “It was the stethoscope. It does it every time!” said I with a smile. I reflected on how very kind our Lord is and how dear the fellowship I have joined at LifePoint has become to me. The thought warmed me as we parted ways; I hardly noticed the bitter cold.

Young Adults Volunteer at Springfield Victory Mission

by Heather Myer

I have helped with Victory Missions for two years, and each time the Lord blesses me much more than I could ever hope to bless another. The previous three times I had helped with a food drive, they were short on volunteers to help load groceries into cars. It isn't a hard job, but it does require lifting and is a nice workout. I was a bit nervous and I didn't know how many volunteers to expect. Most people I had spoken to were either noncommittal or had other plans for the morning. We had to work out in the cold in 30-degree weather and arrive at 7:30 on a Saturday morn.

I arrived at the site with a breakfast offering of Panera bagels and hot chocolate, and at first, I didn't see anyone I knew. Pallets containing grocery sacks, boxes of hams, and bags of potatoes were scattered on either side of a driveway, and several men were breaking down cardboard boxes a distance away from me. These men were aided by VM, and it warmed my heart to meet some of those we were helping serve. A man with a familiar face waved from a distance and walked over to greet me. Paul, quite disguised by several layers of clothing and devoid of his glasses, had been helping the men take apart the boxes. I was impressed by his punctuality, as the time had just reached 7:30. He had brought a friend from college named JT to help. The thing about SBU is that it is so small that college-mates might not have personally known each other at the time of attending school, but we can easily recognize each other’s presence several years after graduating. We share a kind of special bond based on our Alma Mater’s uncanny use of purple on every surface imaginable (and I do mean every--from dorm phones to hand rails) and the fictional mascot of a bearcat. Such was the case with JT.

My good friend, Kendra and her boyfriend, Kyle, arrived shortly afterwards, and the five of us huddled around the bagels and hot cocoa, hoping to stay warm. Soon, the cavalry arrived. Three cars pulled into the driveway and Jon Goings, Dallas and Heather Gilion, Sam and Rachel Pate, Andrea and her friend Wendy, Bryant Fletcher, and Tiffany Blackwell joined our huddle around the bagels and cocoa. A van full of 20 youth also arrived from Cherry Street Baptist Church to help with the efforts.

Anne, the VM coordinator, gathered our groups and the men from VM. We were told to find a position and man it. When a delivery car pulled into the driveway, a number signifying the quantity of families to be helped was put on the dashboard. Each family received a ham and two grocery sacks (containing a cake mix, frosting, nuts, powdered milk, fruit, eggs, bread, corn, green beans, rolls, and other items that I have long since forgotten).

Soon, a stream of cars arrived, and because most other areas were manned, I mainly helped the men with the hams (the boxes contained 4 hams, with a combined weight of 40 lbs). Jon and Dallas helped dole out potatoes and hams, and the youth delivered grocery bags to the cars while the rest of our group set up grocery sacks and filled them with food. When I grew weary of hams, I helped our group on the other side of the drive. It was such fun! We formed an assembly line to speed up the process: First, Paul unfolded grocery sacks like nobody’s business. (Sam commented on this, and Paul replied, “I have gone to college for nine years to do this very job!”) I picked up a sack and twisted to allow Sam to drop a package of orange juice into my bag. Rachel then took my bag and passed it to Heather, who placed bread in it. Tiffany put fruit in it and then passed it to Wendy, who put eggs in it. Andrea then picked up the bag and raced in attempts to beat JT and Bryant to the cars. If they did not get to a car before the others, they might have to carry the bag back to the pallets without depositing it, which wasn’t very productive.

We had quite a bit of fun with our assembly line, and at times, we all lined up and picked up grocery sacks and handed them off to one another for the sake of moving them 10 yards down the driveway; it helped us stay warm and easily provided entertainment. At other times, we would become overeager in our attempts to race each other or stay warm, and more than once, I grabbed too many hams (six or seven) in my eagerness and had to ask Dallas or Jon to help hoist them in the back of a pick-up truck when I could not lift them myself. In another instance, Andrea had lost her grip on her second grocery sack and Paul reached out to save her bag while keeping hold on two of his own. We had a very good system of teamwork.

We ran out of hot water for cocoa about 10 o’clock, and by that time, the bagels had lost their warmth and had become icy feeling; however, the sun peeped from behind the clouds and warmed us. Along with the sunshine and my hefty boxes of ham, I was able to shed my jacket and freely dash to deposit food in cars. It was such fun! It astounds me to think that something so small as carrying ham or placing eggs in a grocery sack can lead to establishing deeper friendships and providing fellowship, even in the wee hours of a Saturday morn. God is so very good. We were able to form relationships with the men from VM, the youth group, and the kind people who generously dedicated their time to delivering the food. We finished around 11 a.m. and went our separate ways. In all, we were able to help 750 families in Springfield to have a Christmas feast. Again I say our Lord is so very good!