So, I go to Valley Ranch Baptist Church. About 11ish years ago, we were challenged to spread outside our walls. Yeah, missions in other cities is a big part of the expansion, but the church is located about 40 miles away from south Dallas, a place ridden with poverty, drugs, violence, prostitutes, lack of education, and general desperation. This will be the 11th year to do what we like to call "The Christmas Store".
Basically, my church becomes Wal-Mart. But better. Much better. Months in advance to the second weekend in December, parents start signing themselves up at VRBC's sister church, Cornerstone, so they can be "customers" at the Christmas Store. When the weekend is upon them (and everyone at VRBC), these south Dallas residents are picked up via van (driven by men from our church) and taken to my church. Once they arrive, they are seated in a hospitality area and given food and drink.
Then the fun begins. A GPS (guider, prayer, server) who goes to my church will come and get them from the lobby and start to get to know them. The GPS and customer (generally a woman because men tend to not be around in south Dallas...a sad fact I've grown accustomed to) will then go pick up some shoppers in a designated room.
Shoppers are generally younger kids, in elementary or middle school, and their parents and they carry the bags with the customer's name and kids' names on them. The GPS will then guide the shoppers and customer through our church, aka, the store. They go into the rooms where the gifts for each child are held, seperated by age groups (ages 0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13+), and the parent or guardian of that child picks out a big gift and a small gift for each of their kiddos. After getting the gifts, they then go get socks, underwear, and a sweatshirt for the kids and parent(s). And the kids get stockings stuffed by VRBC's children's ministry and those have candy, toothbrush, toothpaste, and other little necessities for a growing kid.
After getting all the goodies, the shoppers had back to the shopper room and the GPS and customer go to the santuary where they will continue to have conversation. The GPS will then pray with his or her customer and possibly share the gospel. Then prayer requests by the customer are written and tacked onto a huge, wooden cross at the front of the stage. The GPS then hugs their customer and takes them back to hospitality where they wait for the next van going back to Cornerstone.
Oh, and did I mention that all gifts are being wrapped while the GPS and customer are in the sanctuary and in hospitality? It's basically a free Christmas for these people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford one. Without my church, nearly 1,300 kids wouldn't have Christmas gifts under the tree. Powerful stuff.
But that's just half of the deal. You're probably wondering where all those 1,300 kids are while they're parents are shopping? Wonder no more! I have an answer!
The parents go in shifts and the whole ordeal, travel time included, takes about three hours. So while the parents are shopping on either Friday or Saturday, a lot of their kids are at Cornerstone church in Dallas under the care of VRBC's youth group, henceforth known as 86:12. Naturally, not all 1300 kids go to Cornerstone--that would be just a tad overwhelming. And a lot of the kids have aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends to stay with, so we generally have somewhere between 400-700 kids that run through Cornerstone on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.
These kids then get to practically be in a carnival and each kid is assigned a "buddy", which is an 86:12 member. They get coloring and activity packets that are Christmas-themed. They make a bookmark that tells the story of Salvation (I led that section and God blessed me with the opportunity to lead 5 kids to Christ!!) and write prayer requests on green pieces of paper that they then tack onto a wooden cross. After the prayer requests, they move onto the book section where they can sit down and read a book with their buddy and then get to pick out 6 books to take home. After the book fair, they migrate to the nice craft room where they make a present for the parent at my church (this year they made ornaments). Then they go to the craft room that's for themselves (candy canes with beads and pipe cleaners). However, the favorite is the play-dough, cookie, face-painting, video game room which is where they go after they've done everything else. That's also where they get to get the wide variety of food that our awesome men in the kitchen are whipping up for us.
Every once in a while, there was a nativity story that was led by a couple guys in my grade, Drew and Luke. They narrated the story of Jesus' birth while the kids put on costumes acted it out. It was rough going the first time but when middle school teacher Haley came and organized it, everything ran much smoother. The nativity scene is always a highlight.
I'm in RLT (refuge leadership team--refuge is the name of our youth group) and there are about 30 other RLTers. We all had specified jobs to do, like I was in the bookmark room. People were manning the craft rooms, the little kid room, the nursery, the carnival room...etc. There were jobs for everyone. Then there's LIT which stands for "leaders in training". They're sophomores who will graduate into RLT the next year and are training to be the next leaders of the youth group. They ran the book fair this year.
The Christmas Store is amazing and a humbling experience. I love being able to participate every year and will be sad next year when I can't come and help because of college. I'll always hold the memories close to my heart and am excited to hear stories in the future.
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