It truly is an honor serving hurting people on Christmas Eve. Last year was the first time I worked frontlines homeless services and it changed me forever. I honestly don’t think I can ever go back to a traditional holiday celebration after what have I experienced.

This photo is my friend Dan Portnoy helping me deliver a Christmas Tree to a homeless family’s hotel room. Don Garza also came along. After I let three homeless families pick what toys they wanted we loaded up the van with two families and went grocery shopping so they would have food the next few days.

One scared mom called me from a bus she had been riding all day. She was with her one-year-old baby and didn’t have any place to go after a domestic violence crisis. She left with nothing, not even a coat, diapers, or socks on her baby’s feet. I asked her to meet me at the hotel that we use as transitional housing for homeless families. Thanks to Sonya Keith I just happened to have several baby sweaters for all the children. I even had a coat for the mom.

As one mom with two little children stood in the doorway waving goodbye as we left my heart broke. When I first knocked on her door the oldest child looked up to me and said, “I’m hungry”. They didn’t have any food until we arrived. By no means was it a perfect Christmas for these desperate families. But in some small way we were able to help them make it a little better.

Too me, although last year is hard to beat, this was the best Christmas ever!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 2:35 pm and is filed under My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.