Merry CHRISTmas

What a wonderful Christmas Marvin and I had!!! Thanks to a generous check to the ministry and a donation of some colorful toboggans handmade with love, we were again able to take gifts to 25 street people early on Christmas morning. The packages were grander than ever and each one receiving the gift was blessed and so excited!

Because of the generous donations, our ministry was able to give each person among other things a blanket, towel, t-shirt, socks, toboggan, gloves, toothbrush, tooth paste, deodorant, lotion, razor, shaving cream, apple, orange, bottle of water, candy, gum, writing pens, a pen light, candy cane, rain poncho, and a witnessing brochure.

There are many stories I could share with you about that morning but I’ll only share a few. We did our shopping early the week before Christmas. People would stop and look at us filling up three baskets full of blankets, t-shirts, socks and other goodies. They would come up to us asking questions about our purchases and we were able to tell them about God’s goodness.

After several evenings of preparation, we got up at 5am on Christmas morning. It was cold, windy, and even though it had been raining for a couple of days it stopped long enough, praise the Lord for us to load the truck with gifts, and OH what a load!!!! We absolutely could not have placed another thing in the truck anywhere. Every nook and cranny in the entire truck including under the flat covered bed was completely full.

We started out on our journey a little after 6am and it was raining again. We had been praying for several weeks that God would hand pick the persons that were to receive these gifts and put them in our path on Christmas day. We went to all the underpasses, corners, thicket areas, and other places where we knew people stayed but there was not a soul to be found.

Isn’t it funny how quick the evil one steps in to say how all this effort was for nothing? We drove around for about an hour and then went by the shelter downtown and there they were. The shelter was serving hot coffee and the line was endless of people trying to get in out of the rain and the cold.

Because there were so many people there and we only had 25 gifts we decided the best thing for us to do was to go back home until mid-morning and give it another try. On our way home we spotted one man in a sleeping bag up under an overpass. We stopped and without approaching him yelled Merry Christmas but he never responded. We honked the horn but there was so much noise from all the traffic under the overpass that he never looked up so we came on home.

We decided to start out again about 10am and by that time it had stopped raining but it was really cold and the wind was really blowing hard. Satan tried one more time to discourage us……the left front tire was totally flat!!! Oh no….not on Christmas morning!!! Marvin put in a can of that stuff to fix a flat and aired it up with an electric compressor enough so we could get to a service station for more air. Thank the Lord the tire stayed aired up because there was NO way we could have put all that stuff in the car!

Off we went to see who the Lord had selected to receive these gifts. It was awesome to see the looks on their faces! Many times we would spot someone and have to drive down to the next interstate exit and back again in order to get to them. We parked in some of the oddest places to be able to get near the people that we saw.

There was one over hang up under an interstate turn around where six men lived. Marvin honked his horn and when they came to edge and looked down at us he hollered Merry Christmas! They came running down the ramp to the truck, shook Marvin’s hand and expressed their appreciation. One of the men was a bit older than the rest and he finally ambled his way down to the truck giving Marvin a huge bear hug!! Bless his heart, Marvin said he was skin and bones!

Some of them made remarks like wow shaving cream too or thank goodness a good blanket! Sometimes we would have to pull in to a place safe for us to get out of the traffic and Marvin would honk the horn and motion for them to come over for the gifts. They would take off running and almost be in tears! Some of the women really liked their frilly toboggans and of course on the street socks are a welcomed commodity.

A few times the traffic would be so loud and busy that Marvin would just load up some bags and start over toward them on foot in a busy intersection. At this one intersection a van was passing and the guys all gave Marvin ‘thumbs up’ because they saw what he was doing.

We received way more of a blessing from this than those that received the gifts. I know you’ve heard that all your life but it’s actually true. It was amazing how those people looked out for one another and told us to be sure and go down to some other place where more people were.

We saw places back in the thicket where tents were pitched, tarps were draped, cardboard was leaned up to a tree and more…… We are so thankful to God for our many blessings!!!

It looked like that was all the people we were going to see that morning, but wait….we still had three gifts left! Three gifts, like the three wise men seeking. We had prayed that God would show us 25 people that needed the gifts and here came Satan back one more time to say God had not hand picked each of those people.

There was nothing to do but head back to the house and as we left the interstate to head for home we spotted a man in a vacant corner lot so we pulled in. Marvin headed toward him with his packages, leaving only two more to give away, but WAIT!! The man said he had two more friends sitting in the thicket of canes at the back of the lot and that made our 25 gifts all distributed to those hand picked by God himself!

Marvin and I hope that you were able to have a wonderful day remembering that the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ began our hope for eternal life. You know there are many opinions about dates and times, trees and presents, and whether to celebrate December 25th or not, and on and on. The bottom line for most Christians is that Christmas is a time to remember the greatest gift of all - the birth of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Without Jesus there would be no hope for us, no price paid, no blood shed for our sins, no stripes for our healing, no new beginning, and no Holy Spirit power within us necessary to live in today’s corrupt world.

Praise be to God our Father that He loved us so much that He gave us His only begotten Son!!!! (John 3:16) Without this precious gift there would have been no hope for us to spend eternity with Him.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and peace on earth good will toward men. Shalom…..Marvin and Diana

Our thanks to MinistryClipArt.com for use of the graphics.