Friday, January 13, 2012

A soldier's story

During the Christian HELP Christmas Program, an email confirmation came in from a soldier who wanted to adopt two families for Christmas. At first we were a little skeptical, because the soldier was on active duty in Europe. How could this work? How would he get the gifts and food to the families or our office? So we emailed the soldier and asked these questions. He said he would order everything online and have it delivered to Christian HELP, and asked if we could wrap them. We said yes! This was unbelievable!

In the days that followed, packages started to come in for his two adopted families. We put everything away and sent email confirmations to the soldier, to let him know what had been delivered. It was an exciting process. Packages were coming in randomly, so we had to record and insure the right gifts went to the right family. The soldier had been given the telephone numbers of his adopted families and called them, but insisted on remaining anonymous. The first family he called was an Egyptian refugee, who spoke Arabic as did the soldier!

It was getting close to the dates, that the families would come to the office to pick up their Christmas adoption and we were still missing one gift, dance clothing for a little girl. A few of us were getting nervous and just prayed that the Lord would make it come in on time. About one half hour later the last gift came in! We cheered; were so happy and were now able to call the two families to come pick up!

When the families came in, they were overwhelmed and the tears just flowed. The questioned asked was, “is this all for us?” speaking almost in a dream state of unbelief. We said yes. The families were humble and so very thankful to have been blessed in such a big way. We took a photo of each family and emailed it to the Solider. We asked how did you hear about Christian HELP’s Christmas program? He said through his sister in Florida.

As usual, God came through at all the right times and you helped in a huge way by making it possible to have all that was necessary on our end. Thanks for helping with the other 602 families who got Christmas in 2011.