Christmas Delivered With Some TLC
This is really a follow up to my previous entry, Christmas Time In The City. The Emmanuel Center Christmas party was yesterday and it was phenomenal. I don’t really know where to start. Many members of TLC Community church went to the inner city in Memphis and put on a Christmas party for 45 kids and some of their parents. We started with some fun music from our band made up of some TLC folks. It sure looked like everyone enjoyed the music. Then is was time to eat. We had a kitchen full of people that began preparing the food a few hours before the party and I kept thinking “if the smell is any indication of what it tastes like, we’re in for a treat”. Well it was great food that was enjoyed by all 120 people there. I heard comments from young and old alike that the food was perfect. We watched those children look at the pile of gifts for two hours and it was finally time to pass them out. I couldn’t begin to describe the smiles on faces that we watched over and over. I also saw joy in the eyes of parents whose youngsters had been blessed by the generosity of these folks from TLC. The party was a total success.
The comments about the party could stop there and it would be good. But let me tell you some more of what I think about this event.
First of all, there were upwards of sixty people there from a church that is only a couple of years old. I’ve been in many churches where two percent of the people do ninety-eight percent of the work-not here. When I first came to this church about a year ago I heard our pastor preach about how this was a church that got out and served the community instead of just writing checks. I don’t want to sound like I was a skeptic but hey…I was a skeptic. Well, praise God - I’m a skeptic no more. I had already learned over the last year that these folks were serious, but yesterday I saw my friends from TLC put their “shoe leather” where their mouth is and it was cool. God will bless this church if we continue to do what we did yesterday.
The music at the party was superb. I tell you this because I really had no idea what these guys would play, I just knew it would be good. Here’s the cool thing, all I had to do was tell them what time we needed them and they took the ball and ran with it. It was such a blessing to be able to just hand this part of the project off and know that it would be done. Great work Tim (and company), you guys are the best!
Speaking of people you can rely on, the kitchen crew was amazing. Suzy, Anita and the rest of the group cooked up a meal that was home cooking for 120 people. You need to understand something here and that is that many of the people that enjoyed that meal don’t know where their next one is going to come from. This is a poor community and for some of these folks putting food on the table is a daily struggle. No one has ever shown up and cooked a Christmas dinner there and many of the adults were very touched by the effort put forth by the kitchen crew. Suzy Owens, you have a God given gift for delivering hospitality and He was smiling at you yesterday for using it.
I must give praise here for the youth of our church. I’m not sure they really understood exactly what we were going to do when they showed up. There were almost thirty kids there that all worked very hard all afternoon. Some of the kids set up the sound equipment and others helped set up the room. But the most amazing thing was watching the kids serve dinner. You can accuse me of waxing poetic here but I’m telling you that there is something very powerful about watching the affluent kids from the suburbs serving the folks in the inner city that don’t have much. Something tells me that more than a few of those kids went home with a different perspective this Christmas. Thanks to Tim Hill for organizing the kids efforts on a moments notice.
By the way, there’s a danger in mentioning names in an article like this in that I might forget someone. There’s no way I could thank everyone that helped, I’m just pointing out a few key people that I personally saw stepping up. All of you were special yesterday. Since it’s my blog I guess I can brag on my kids. Kylie, Elizabeth and J.R. worked from start to finish yesterday. I’ve never been more proud of you guys-you’re as good as they come.
The generosity shown by the TLC family at gift giving time was tremendous. We adopted 45 kids at the center and all of them received multiple gifts. There were bikes and CD players as well as some nice clothes and games. I watched the faces of some of the mothers in the crowd as the kids opened their gifts and I saw a few tears. You see, many of these children will get very little and in some cases nothing at all under the tree. How special do you suppose we made some parents feel when we were able to fill in the gap this Christmas?
My last entry explained why I think this party is important so I won’t rehash that. But I do want to say that it was clear to me that we were sharing the love of Christ yesterday. I spoke with many people at the Emmanuel center that told me this was the best Christmas party they’ve ever seen there. One the mothers stood with me and watched as the meal was served. She was commenting on how nice the food was and that the folks serving it were doing such a nice thing. Then she got quiet, I looked over at her and saw tears in her eyes as she looked around the room and said “now this is Christmas”.