Shine the Light and Hope on the Needy This Christmas
November 30, 2009
Anna Jackson counted her nickels as she walked to the dollar store to buy a single strand of colored Christmas lights. Her husband had recently died and she yearned to give her two young children one simple joy, even if it was just a row of lights taped to the window of their small apartment.
She was rewarded by their smiles when she plugged in the Christmas lights, but it wasn’t long before joy was replaced by sadness. Freezing temperatures hit Selma and Anna’s apartment turned so cold inside she could see her breath. She used the oven and a small electric heater, but nothing Anna tried warmed up the bitter cold apartment.
She finally broke down and turned up the thermostat, not knowing how she would pay the gas bill. That’s when she discovered why her apartment was so cheap. There was no heat. To her dismay, the previous tenants had torn out the small furnace.
So, just weeks before Christmas, Anna and her children were homeless. They came to the Missions for help and we found a hotel room that would rent by the week. As they gathered up their few belongings, including the single strand of Christmas lights, Anna told our outreach worker, “The apartment wasn’t much, but it was home.”
You see, Anna had moved her kids back to Selma after her husband passed away. She found a part-time job cleaning motel rooms and settled her children into a simple, three-room rental. When the economy bottomed out, she lost her job and was forced to move into the small apartment without heat next to the railroad tracks. Her children’s favorite pastime was to stand out in the dirt yard and watch the freight trains roar past.
Uprooted now for the third time in six months, Anna’s family will be spending Christmas in a dingy motel room, unsure and frightened of what lies ahead. Anna has no money for food or rent. While she worries about the future, her four-year-old is worried about just one thing: “Mama, how’s Santa gonna find us now?”
It’s tragic to see so many families struggling with all their might to make it through the next hour or the next day without enough food. It tugs on my heart when I see the vacant eyes of mothers and fathers, some with part-time jobs, forced to keep moving from one place to another in search of somewhere to call “home,” while facing one humiliating defeat after another.
This is the first Christmas without her husband and Anna has lost nearly everything, even her pride. “The worst day was when my daughter couldn’t go to school because we were looking for a warm place to sleep and we didn’t have any soap or water for a bath,” she said. Most of us take a meal and a hot shower for granted, but to exhausted, homeless families, simple comforts are luxuries they cannot afford.
For many people across the country, Christmas will mean cutting back and going without. I appreciate the many letters I get from elderly friends of the Missions who are also worried about the future. At the same time, I am overwhelmed by the generosity of those who give their “widow’s mite” to help families like Anna’s.
I cannot find it in my heart to cut our vital ministry to the poor during these broken times. That’s why I’m coming to you. I need your help to bring the joy of Jesus to little children, elders and families this Christmas. With your compassionate response, we can hopefully provide up to 500 Christmas food bags filled with fruit, vegetables and other nutritious food to celebrate our Savior’s birth among people who have so little. Every day we serve over 250 people at Bosco Food Kitchen in Selma – 365 days a year. Hunger does not take a holiday. I don’t know how we will manage to feed the poor this Christmas without your help.
Please shine the light and hope of our Savior’s birth on the needy this Christmas. Your gift of $53 will buy simple gifts for ten children and elders. Due to rising food prices it will cost $360 to fill twenty Christmas bags with healthy food for the hungry. I need and appreciate every donation I receive for those who do without.
I am asking you to help us change a sad, discouraging Christmas into one of happiness for others less fortunate, by providing nourishing food for people like Anna, who will otherwise endure a lonely holiday without a real home. It was touching to see how her little children watched over their single strand of Christmas lights, which are now hanging in the motel window as a symbol of hope so that Santa will be able to find them.
You are in my daily prayers, as you surely will be when I celebrate Mass on Christmas Day. May you and your loved ones join me in giving thanks to our loving God who never leaves us. “She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God is with us.” Matthew 1:23
Blessings in the Precious Name of Jesus,
Rev. Richard Myhalyk, S.S.E.
