Thursday, December 14, 2006

Doing the Most Good

That is the motto of the Salvation Army. Every quarter my department tries to complete a charity event. Sometimes they are small, sometimes they are simple cash donations, other times we donate our time. Such is the case today.

The Salvation Army’s Dallas and National headquarters are really close to Dallas Love Field. Today we went to a local sorting house where all of the gifts give for the Army’s Angel Trees are stored and sorted. We spent the day double checking families bags to ensure all the toys were in the right place.

This event was very humbling and eye opening. We would see bags for an entire family with no donations or toys in them, although someone had picked their name off of a tree. We would see bags just stuffed to the brim, over flowing with everything imaginable. You would come across bags where the entire family was one child with an unpronounceable name, while your next bag would have eight children with very pronounceable names. Lastly you would come across one bag with three children and three boxes of diapers. It was a moving and worthwhile experience.

While I do not agree with all of what the Salvation Army does or believes, I can truly say that I full heartedly agree with their Christmas spirit. The next bell ringer I see, I won’t ignore.

3 comments:

Viki said...

I concur on the Salvation Army thing - it's got to be so neat to work for a company that encourages doing volunteer work like that.

aimee said...

Thanks for sharing. My sons never let me ignore the bell ringer. I am glad they don't.

TreyJ said...

The bell ringers are fine. It's the folks that carry buckets around at intersections that bother me. They always look really sketchy - you can never tell what group they're with and they tend to be really aggressive.