one of my top favorite days!...

yesterday morning, jake, piper and i went to Eugene Fields Elementary....it is an inner city school here in Oklahoma city...99% of the students are on the free lunch program and 88% of the students are Hispanic. Crossings is involved in a ministry where you can pick up a backpack at the church for a specific child and fill the backpack with Christmas gifts! Then a group of volunteers goes and reads the real Christmas story to the children, tell them about Jesus Christ then hand them their backpack full of gifts...I have never been involved in something like this, and it was one of my favorite days ever! These children were so grateful!! they would run around the room so excited to show their friends what they had got (didn't matter if it was a Hannah Montana movie or a box of crayons...they were equally excited!). Just amazing! There were many Crossings parents that took their kids out of school to go help deliver backpacks....i feel that it was an amazing lesson in humanity and will always take our children!
Jake reading the story of Christmas

sweet girls receiving her backpack full of gifts!


While his entire class was tearing into their gifts this little boy was sitting quietly at his desk with his backpack untouched...i went to ask him why he was not opening his gifts and he told me he wanted to wait, so that he would have gifts to open on Christmas. I was told that this happens every year,and even learned later that the little girl behind him in the photo was doing the same thing...but that was just so hard for me to hear...so as i fought back the tears i ask him if i could take and photo of him with his backpack...he held it so proud.... :)

happiness...