They wouldn’t go without this Christmas
We made our last delivery of gifts on Christmas eve to a family who recently arrived in Australia. From what I understand, the dad and his 3 children fled their homeland after losing their mum and are now living with his sister and her 3 younger children. According to the children’s teacher, they’ve had some trouble settling into their new environment and life has been very emotional. Dad is doing his best but is struggling to keep it together.
As we pulled up to the house, the kids were outside kicking an old tattered ball. When they realized we were walking into their place with boxes full of presents, they swarmed around us like flies. Their beautiful beaming faces showed no sign of hardship and could have lit the darkest night. It was so beautiful to see and broke my heart knowing a little of what they’d been through.
The older boy took a box of presents from under one arm as he saw me struggling and then all of a sudden, as quick as they’d appeared, they were gone! Off they ran into the house and when we walked inside they were sitting around the box, pulling out the presents with happiness filling the air. The place was buzzing and when I asked if they were going to wait until Christmas to open them, there was complete silence as they looked at their dad for instructions. He motioned to wait and they obediently popped the presents back in the box, but were still beaming from ear to ear with the anticipation of being able to open something on Christmas day.
We’d deliberately left this family to last as they were our priority and we wanted to see what we had left over after delivering to our other schools and organizations on the list. As it turned out, we’d been very lucky to have more gifts, food and essentials donated after our cut off date and these hadn’t been allocated to anyone in particular, so we were able to take several boxes of extra goodies with us.
We chatted with the kids for a while and gave them a big box of magnetic toys my boys had played with when they were younger and told them it was something they could play with now and we received a beautiful hug from the eldest girl as we left them to play.
I called their teacher to let her know we had delivered their Christmas gifts and she told me how worried she’d been about them and how happy it had made her that they wouldn’t go without this Christmas. It was a really heartwarming experience and it was very clear this family was exceptionally grateful.
Of all the highlights from the past few months, this was, without doubt the most heartwarming experience as it was clear this family was very deserving and grateful. – Lis, Ripple Kindness Project 🙂