Re: Giving Tree 2021
Unfortunately, the Outreach Committee was faced with another year of being unable to do things “the way we used to†and we had to pivot our annual giving tree project into an online event. Fortunately, our congregation is used to pivoting at this point and our call for gifts was still answered in abundance.
We used the power of Amazon to make this as smooth a process as possible, using a gift registry to share with the congregation just what gifts these children wanted. This year we again partnered with the     Community Healthlink residential recovery homes where children are going through the reunification process with their mothers.  We had 17 children from 3 different homes – Orchard Street in Leominster, Faith House, and Beryl’s House in Worcester – who ranged in age from 18 months to 17 years old. We were easily able to provide the children of all these homes with a few things off their wish list to be opened on Christmas morning. Add, due to the speed of Amazon, we were able to add a few more children to the list who moved into the program in December to ensure that they still had gifts to open with the rest of the house on Christmas day!
It was a humbling experience to be able to meet the needs of these three programs, completely virtually, without the physical tree and friendly reminders on Sunday mornings. A congregation, like a family,       answers calls for help however they are received, and this campaign proved that.  All the gifts for the 17 children were wrapped and delivered to the programs on December 20th and each has its own tag complete with the name or age of the child and From The First Congregational Church of Westminster.
The road of recovery and reunification is never an easy one for these mothers and children to travel and Covid19 has certainly added a few roadblocks on that journey including canceled visitations, mask wearing when not in their own rooms, and limited access to the community and programming. I am honored to be able to hand-deliver all of these presents to these programs and to know that, for at least one morning, there will be fun, joy, and excitement – the way Christmas should be for every child.
With the sincerest of Thanks, stay safe and God bless