Shiny Bright A Day of Gifts

Yesterday on the walk this bright shiny ball started to rise out of the eastern sky. The sun finally decided to bless us with it's presence ALL day. We had a beautiful warm sunny day. Unfortunately most of the day was spent working.
Rhoda and Emily pulled out at 8:00 am with Katy. They were delivering her to her new owner up by Chicago. When they arrived, even before she was unloaded, the lady was thrilled.

She is from England and use to play with the Gypsy children just so she could ride their horses. Katy is her best Christmas present ever.
Meanwhile Diane and I were a little worried about having enough help for the Berean day with Rhoda and Emily gone. On the walk we mentioned that to Joan and as a gift to us Joan brought down an amazing crew of helpers. Bill and Bethany were in town for the Meister Christmas and joined us along with Tim, Sarah, Hannah, Joan and Karin from out this way.
When we arrived at Meister's we had 2 children join in the fun, Crystal and Amanda both brought their children in to work and both were more than willing to help out.

Tim Martin called on Monday to give us the bad news that he was not going to be able to deliver the Bibles but the good news that they were all stuffed, wrapped and ready to go at the warehouse in Goodfield. Diane called Spark and he had his son Jacob pick them up. 

That was such a gift, then Eva Jean arrived with MORE gifts.  Sixteen HUNDRED jumbo papers clips! These had been donated to Berean by Angie. They were joined by the hundreds of clips Gail donated! I believe we now have enough paper clips to last us a few years! Diane R. donated more letter openers, while Eva Jean donated more pens. We thought it must be Christmas already.

We couldn't spend much time admiring our shiny clips, openers and pens, work awaited and work we did. Our volunteers started to arrive and Diane started to put everyone to work. In the picture below Tim has 2 helpers and they are getting the labels put on the Bibles. 

 People were piling in all ready for jobs! In the picture below Diane is taking a crew over to the conference room to start them on envelopes and studies while the sitters are already hard at work with letters.

 Lance, our copier repair man showed up. The copier is now running great.

 Lisa dropped off 2 of her boys and everyone worked hard until noon. We were able to finish almost everything by that time. The Bibles were loaded into Diane's van and off we drove to the post office.

 In the picture above Joan is keeping a big group busy and below the Bibles are getting moved from Diane's van up onto the loading dock at the post office.

 Once the van was emptied of boxes it could hold people. We drove to Denny's for a relaxing lunch. Such an amazing amount of work was accomplished by many many hands. A big thank you to everyone who donated time and supplies during this busy Christmas season.

Mom couldn't come today, the last 2 remaining puppies were picked up by their owners. Mom had to confess it was hard to see them go even though she knew they were going to good homes. These fun fluffy friendly Shih Tzu puppies made us all realize Molly MUST have MORE! 

As soon as I arrived home the vegetables were started cooking. Our family was to provide hot and cold vegetables for a hundred people at 6:00 pm.  Well we had MORE than 125 join in the fun at the fellowship hall for the Meister Christmas. No one in the family wants to miss that! I forgot the camera and my phone was dead but Diane took pictures. Hopefully she will share them with us. She rented a bouncy slide for the kids, the food was the best dinner we ever had for this party, the kids all love to perform on the stage with the microphone and of course the reading of the Christmas story is a highlight! Spark didn't read the this time  but gathered the children around and had them help tell the story. Ryan was a good santa claus and by the time the gifts were given out and the lights turned back on we didn't leave for home until much later than MY bed time.