Loaves and fishes.....

Every year Hope House adopts 60-75 (except for the year God told me to keep on going and we ended up with 114—but that’s another blog post!) families for our Christmas list. In these families, each child receives a stuffed stocking, a clothing gift and a toy gift. It’s a wonderful program and one of the highlights of our year is the distribution of gifts. We encourage families, groups and companies to adopt whole families each year, so that it makes the gathering and distribution easier. This year, we were blessed with 74 families being adopted outright! This leaves us with no whole families on our list, so we were able to put generic gift tags on our Angel Tree at church. What that means is that starting yesterday; we began to distribute single, wrapped gifts to those children whose families did not make it on our list—I put 140 tags on the tree and we still ran out of tags! People brought us random gifts and toys in their place.

So here is how wonderful this place is. Emmanuel means “God with us”, and sometimes I think we should change our name to Emmanuel’s House. Why? We started giving out gifts yesterday morning with 3 bookcases full of wrapped gifts. We were VERY busy all morning, and yet, at the end of the morning, we still had 3 bookcases full of wrapped gifts; they just kept coming! He has let us know many times that He is with us every day, and this is just the latest example. God is truly with us and our mission at Hope House.

When I squint, I can almost see Him handing out the loaves and fishes………

Family and Football.......

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I have the best job in the world! Today is a typical Friday, busy, crazy, noisy and crowded; and yet, somehow it works out and feels homey around here. When I wander out to the buzzing waiting room, I find laughter, teasing and sharing of resources and information. I ask if we are having a party and I get lots of smiles in return. It probably helps that at this time of year, we are blessed with extra goodies to share in the waiting area—people bring us candy, Christmas cookies, oranges—and that makes everyone smile. I am always amazed at the patience my clients share with each other and the “system”.

On Monday mornings, our waiting room becomes the “morning after” football discussion and critique. Our clients are huge Seahawks fans and we wear our colors proudly! When the occasional Bears or Cowboys fan wanders in, the teasing begins, but we all have fun with the whole subject. I wish the Seahawks could see how much they mean to those with little else to brighten their days.

So what’s the point? The point is that Hope House is family to those who need our services. We are a place where people feel valued and welcome. We are a community within our greater community and we are proud of it! Our clients love coming in and being greeted by name, they like that we know who their children are and what they are up to. They love the teasing and laughter they find to go give them armor to face the rest of their day.

At this time of year, to borrow a phrase, “Hope House is one of the happiest places on earth!”