Merry Christmas!
I think we all thought that by this time we would be well done with this Covid-19 stuff, but we are still dealing with it every day. We are also encountering the same problems that we did with our Giving Trees and although not as bad as 2021 – 2022, it still has forced us to maintain those same procedures that we developed for these Christmases. Just as a reminder, here is what we did.
We came up with the idea of a virtual Christmas Giving Tree tag which allows every member of the parish to safely participate. It is a two-part process: the first is to select the number of tags they would like, the second is to drop off their gift at a participating church drop off location listed on our website or have the gift shipped directly to us at 242 Canterbury Street.
We are asking the parishes to let their parishioners know that they can safely participate in the Giving Tree simply be going to our website, www.urbanmissionaries.com and pressing the Christmas Giving Tree tag button to let us know how many tags they would like to have and we will get the tags to them within 24 hours.
Even with the virtual tag process, we believe that we will have a shortfall of gifts due to the panic situation I mentioned above. How much we really don’t know, but we have started a Go Fund Me drive to raise $20,000 so that we can go out and buy gifts to cover the shortfall. We are ESPECIALLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE 11- TO 14-YEAR-OLDS.
This category has always been the most difficult group to obtain gifts for simply because their gifts are expensive.
Another facet of this problem is volunteers. Every year we have between 225 and 250 Christmas volunteers. These magnificent people come, and with concern and love put together a gift bag for a particular child and then they do it over and over again until all 2,500 gift bags are made up, tied together by family and passed out to the family – all before December 24th.
We expect that this year again, we will have to limit the number of people working in one area to ten. In anticipation of this, we extended the hours that the distribution center will be open, it is open every day from 10:00 A.M. until 7:00 P.M..
Our GoFundMe appeal had been set up. We are asking you to make a contribution so we can fulfill our obligations to the families who have signed up for Christmas toys and winter jackets for their children. As you probably know we keep on accepting applications right up until December 24, 2024 when we close at 12:00 noon.
Just to give you some perspective on how difficult it is, here are some stats: In 2023, from December 18 through December 24, 2024, we signed up 122 children! That equals 610 gifts that were needed to fulfill these requests. Unfortunately, we aren’t always so lucky. In 2022 we had to stop taking names on December 18, and we had to stop taking names on December 15, 2021. Just want you to know sometimes kids go without.
f you would like to participate let us know how: you can:
Get a tag and purchase a gift, by going to www.urbanmissionaries.com/virtual-giving-tree-sign-ups.
To help us buy gifts by donating to our GoFundMe page, go to: Christmas Giving 2024 GoFundMe – Urban
Missionaries of Our Lady of Hope on our website, www.urbanmissionaries.com.
To volunteer, email us at mailbox@urbanmissionaries.com. We will need to know the date you would like to come in, what time you will arrive, how long you plan to stay and the number of people in your group.
No pressure here, but we do want you to know that without your help we fail!
Please keep us in your prayers, and may you and yours have a very Blessed Christmas. May the Good Lord bless you for what you are about to do for “the least, the last, and the left out!”