It’s another one for the books. We had 704 families
sign up for gifts this year, down about 110 families
from last year, a trend that we have noticed over the
last 5 years. Another trend we have observed over the
past 10 years is that the family size has also dropped
from around 4-6 people to 4 people. We also think
that the community we serve has matured and they
have greater job opportunities. All of this lowers
dependence on support organizations. We consider
this a Blessing!

We had 150 volunteers come to help take names, go
shopping for gifts, set up the bagging area, make
bags, fill bags, carry bags, sort bags, and pass out
bags! If you have never done this then, you just don’t
understand how heavy Christmas is, especially when
a parent has requested either school supplies or
exercise equipment for a present.

We had almost 100 donors make cash donations,
either through our GoFundMe page or in response to
our direct mail and email campaign. This outpouring
of your generosity allowed us to confidently tell
anxious mothers, “Yes, we can still help your family
even though it is Dec 23rd!!!” This year we signed up
33 children, and they received about 160 gifts on
December 23rd. Thank you.

Once again we had the opportunity to catch up on the
lives of our Christmas friends, those who come to
volunteer year in and year out. It is really fun to see
their kids growing from one year to the next and how
much they remember how to do things. It makes the
work gets done much faster and with a lot more
accuracy. This year we made only 4 mistakes out of
almost 1900 gift bags. So thank you to all of you,
volunteers, for doing another excellent job!!

On a more serious note, I need to ask you to
think about volunteering during the
remainder of the year. We are struggling to
keep up with our ever-expanding outreach
to the “least, the last, and the left out.” In
the past three years, the ministry has
doubled, ouch!

Thank you, once again for all that you have
done for us,

Kathy and Walter