It’s that time of year again!

As we move into a season of celebration of our saviors birth, we are blessed with another opportunity to serve the moms,dads, and children of Young Lives. Each year at Christmas time we host a “Christmas boutique”at the Young Lives monthly club. In preparation for this event we ask the church for donations for the boutique. We ask for gently used girl,boy, and baby clothing and toys. It is amazing to watch the generosity of Gods people be poured out as our garage is literally bursting at the seams with donations!

The last two weeks have been spent sorting, sizing, and organizing. Again, I am blessed by the outpouring of love, not only in the giving but in the hard work of preparing. So many things to sort through!
The day of the club we load it all up (it took a van and two trucks) to move it to the location of the Christmas club. A group of awesome volunteers came early to set up all these donations for the boutique for the girls and guys to “shop”. There was a “store” for clothing and a “store for baby items.

Each young person received 20 tickets that was used as payment, one ticket per item. We were also blessed with 15 brand new toys and a bike! These items were raffled off at the end of the night. As if this weren’t enough to get excited about, the kids were also blessed by a delicious homemade Christmas dinner, beautiful Christmas decorations, gift cards, and hand written notes from their mentors. This night was an incredible time for us to pour out the lavish, incomparable love of Christ on these kids! The most important time of the night though, happens during the club talk, where the story of the birth of Christ is shared. We talked about why Jesus came, to reconcile us to God, and invite the kids into relationship with Him. As much as we are blessed to bless the kids immensely, we are super blessed to see Jesus change hearts and lives!
It is indeed “The most wonderful time of the year!”