You might have heard our event at Social Bites of Ruston on December 17th! We will be having tons of fun with Mrs. Clause decorating cookies. Once your child is finished, they may take their cookie home and stop to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. Weâll be there the entire time to catch snapshots of your children during the event and to capture a keepsake photo with Santa. All images will be uploaded into a gallery for you to download and keep in digital form and print yourself. For $25 we find that a steal, seeing as you can go to the mall and spend twice that for just a print with Santa, we wanted to make more of a memory for you and your kids this year. We will have two 30 minute groups, one at 10am and the other at 11:30am.
Also, I donât know about you, but being a mother at Christmastime it can be quite tough to push out all the distractions of the real meaning of Christmas. Jesus came as a baby to give us life! I wanted to take a figure, Santa, of such importance to kids and turn it around to show the real meaning of why we celebrate. So every profit we make on this event will be benefiting Samaritanâs Purse.
Last year, I was very surprised to find out many people had not known what Samaritanâs Purse was and I thought Iâd do a little educating. I was introduced to Samaritanâs Purse when I was a little kid. At church you could fill a shoebox with toys for kids in other countries who didnât have the funds to have Christmas presents. I remember we would buy things like crayons, socks, pencils, toothpaste, a ball, etc. Such simple things I thought were insignificant presents. I didnât truly understand how this could be a gift, they were needs not gifts. Once you would fill your shoebox, you would bring it to your church, if they were participating in the event, and then Samaritanâs Purse would ship these boxes all over the world to kids in need. In doing so they would share Jesus while passing out these gifts.
Today as an adult, Iâve heard the testimonies of now adults receiving their shoeboxes and getting such simple items and it was the only gift they had ever received. The toys they would get of course excited them, but the needs we take for granted, were the real gift to them. In turn many of these kids came to know Jesus through this experience. You can find so many of these testimonies from people who got shoeboxes as kids on their website, just google âsamaritanâs purse shoebox storiesâ and youâll find tons of these. One stuck out to me today that Iâd like to share. About a boy in an orphanage receiving a bar of soap. Itâs not long and worth the read to really gauge the weight of the gifts we give. You can see his story HERE.
But what else does Samaritanâs Purse do? They are totally beyond shoeboxes! They are giving reliefs efforts to people all over the world. You can give money to help pay for livestock for a family to provide milk for nutrients and to also provide a living with their animals by selling the milk.
Money you give can be given to help provide medical care to the sick, schooling to the kids, food for a family, provide plants for crops, prevent human trafficking, and give fresh water where they need it, and way more then that.
This organization is wayyyyy more then shoeboxes and they do it in the name of Jesus! So please if youâre going to do a picture with Santa, please skip the mall and come for a cause. Come to teach your kids why we celebrate. Come to provide for kids who donât have simple things as cookies. Come to spread the good news! Shout it from the mountain tops that Jesus Christ is born!!
You can purchase your spot HERE. If you are unable to make the event and still want to contribute you are more then welcome to donate HERE and weâll be sure to get your donation straight to Samaritanâs Purse!