World Vision.......

http://www.worldvision.org/donate.nsf/child/giftcatalog_christmas07?Open&campaign=124608133&cmp=BAC-124608133

Above is the Christmas campaign website for an organization called World Vision. I would ask that you all take the time to check this site & organization out. They do great things all around the world. There are many options within this organization from buying seeds for a family for harvest for $17.00, to ten fruit trees for a family for $60.00 or a goat for $75.00 to actually choosing a child to sponsor. Child sponsorship is so awesome. For as little as a dollar a day you can offer a child a life! You can actually choose the child from the site. They show thousands of photos & tell a little about each child. After doing this you will then get information on your chosen child & then you can even begin to correspond with the child & even send them packages & share photos, stories & updates. You actually get to see what your money is doing & how it is directly changing the child's life. The lessons that your own children & ourselves as well can learn from this can not be learned any other way! The accounts from people who have done this are so emotional & life changing you just can't imagine! These children in these places all know of World Vision & their mission. The children that are old enough & do not have a sponsor spend their days praying that someone will choose them. Especially the ones who have lost both of their parents & have no one. Some are literally living on the streets with no one & are only all of five years old! One of the little girls on the site said that her mother had to sell her for $500.00 to feed the rest of the children/family. She was at a young tender age, not even a teenager yet required to "service" twelve "clients" a day.

In paying less than $5.00 for a school uniform you are not just buying the child the clothing, you are buying them an education as in most of these places without the uniform they are not allowed in school.

I just want us all to take a moment & think about the abundance that we have here in our lives in each of our worlds. We are all one race; the human race. We drew the lucky card. We were born in a land far from where most of these children & families live. It is really all just logistics.

As we are scurrying around to buy gifts & prepare meals it would be very easy to forget about all of the lost, lonely & hungry in other far away places.

Our family has been trending more & more towards less & less gift giving among the adults. I think this is such an important thing. I think tradition & "Santa" for the children is so wonderful & is certainly a tradition that we want for Mia, however, it will be a tradition & not a lavish showering of a mounds of gifts, so many that she doesn't even know where to look first or what to play with. I have to wonder that if we lined up fifty kids ages three-twelve & asked them what Christmas meant to them if we would hear "Family, traditions, God & Jesus, Church, Dinner together, Decorating the tree, Charity; doing for others, sledding, caroling........" or would we hear "Shopping, presents, stress, crowded stores, playing with my toys, time off from school........." As a society I believe that we are very confused & I am not so sure that all of this gift giving hasn't caused a big part of the confusion & stress. I think we all need to reshift our thinking back to what Christmas means to each of us & our families; what is important. For us, we realized that the very time that we could be spending with our family & friends we were instead running around stressed preparing & shopping. That was not okay with us & will even be less okay with us when Mia is here.

If you stop to think about it just recently in your daily lives when people ask you, "Are you ready for Christmas?".....what they really mean is, "Do you have your shopping done?" After Christmas what is the most common question; especially to children? How about "What did you get for Christmas?" I don't know that I have ever heard anyone ask a child, "What were the traditions/activities that you & your family did over this past Christmas that meant the most to you?" Think about it. Does any of this make sense?

Anyway, I just ask that you check out World Vision & also take a moment to examine your own holiday & at the very least make sure your children & families know that Christmas isn't about what you get under the tree!

Jen