Home Ways to Help Christmas Delivering Gift Bags

GIFT BAGS


We meet with many friends over the holiday season and it is our joy to present gifts offered with love and kindness for:

-- inmates at prison events
-- members of the food co-op
-- friends who gather for our Christmas Sunday celebration
-- 12-Step Meeting participants
-- Individuals at drop-in centres
-- Christmas Eve carolling in the Downtown Eastside

Kelly and Jennifer share the impact of gift bags received while they were incarcerated at ACCW



My mother (Elsie's mom Rose) and some women from church fellowships sew hundreds of drawstring cloth bags that we give to many folks.  We pack the downtown bags in plastic because it’s often raining on Christmas Eve. 

DOES IT MATTER ON CHRISTMAS EVE?  It’s incredibly meaningful to enter a shelter with dozens of men on mats  with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and to offer them a gift bag and sing a Christmas song with them.  I've watched tears in eyes as I share with women in prison how other women who don't even know them have gone around to stores and gathered and wrapped gifts for them so they can have a meaningful Christmas. 

DOES IT MATTER IN THE LONG TERM?  It seems that each year we have people come to help with wrapping gifts who at one point in the past have received a Christmas gift that's made a difference.  Last year one man told how he'd been on his own on Christmas Eve in a drop-in centre when "his friends" showed up.  Another time someone told how they didn't think they'd known us until they got to a treatment centre a few weeks prior but having come to help pack gifts now realized that he'd run into us previously because he'd received a gift bag.  He shared how he lined the gifts up in his little room and just looked at them for days before opening them because they meant a great deal to him and he wanted to preserve the warmth and joy they gave him.  Someone else was lying on the sidewalk drunk one Christmas when we stopped to sing.  Through ongoing visits since then they are now employed, reconciled with family, supporting their children and their aged parent.  

DONATIONS: We are looking to reach out to hundreds of people who need to know the real meaning of Christmas and the love that God has shown to them in sending Jesus.  As we prepare events and Christmas gifts to share during those events, we wanted to let you know what we are gathering and what we could use.  To make all these things happen we need your help. 

Wrapping Gifts