Angel Tree

Fundraising

Each September, we begin raising funds to purchase gifts for as many Angels as possible. We will provide each child withat least $100 worth of clothing and $50 worth of toys, so every angel has at least $150 worth of presents waiting for them on Christmas morning.

However, thanks to our partnership with a generous local retailer, we are able to provide all of these gifts at a discount. On average it takes us $100 worth of donations to provide $150 worth of Christmas goodies. This means that if we receive $100 in donations we can adopt 1 angel, if we receive $1,000 in donations we can adopt 10 angels, or if we receive $10,000 we can adopt 100 angels, and it just keeps going from there.

It goes without saying, but we want to be able to help make as many kids’ Christmas dreams come true as we possibly can, so if you like the way we do the Angel Tree at Melbourne Heights, we would love for you to make a donation. Any donation, whether it’s $1 or $1,000 can help to make a big difference. (Plus all donations are tax deductible).

And, aside from a small processing fee that our bank charges, every penny that you give will go directly to purchasing gifts for our angels.

The Angels

By the middle of October, we are in contact with the Salvation Army to let them know how many angels we’ll be able to provide gifts for at Christmas. Soon after, the Salvation Army sends us the tags for the number or angels we’ve requested.

Along with providing us with each angel’s name, age, and gender; these tags also include the angel’s clothing sizes and needs as well as their toy wishes for Christmas. The angels range in age from newborns to twelve years old, and we always have a wide variety of kids we shop for.

When we receive our angels, we take the time to organize the tags by age and gender, and then we start planning our big shopping day.

Shopping

When our big shopping day rolls around, which usually happens in early November, volunteers from our church family and the community get together and spend the better part of a day personally shopping for each angel. We make sure that we take care of all of their clothing needs, which can range from needing things items coats and shoes, to t-shirt and jeans, to socks and underwear. Then we pick out some of the toys on their wish list. These toys can range from books, to Lego, to Barbie, to video games.

Once an individual angel is shopped for, we have additional volunteers who check each bag to make sure the angel will be receiving the items they requested and that we stuck to our budget for each child.

Who Can Volunteer?

When it comes to Christmas shopping, we always say, “The more the merrier.” So anyone is welcome to help out whether you’re a part of our church family or not. Over the years, we have worked with a small group of students from a local school, friends of our church members, and even people who just happened to be out shopping the same time we were and wanted to help out.

We do ask that our volunteers be 18 or older, or have an adult to shop with them. But other than that, we’d be happy to have your help. If you’d like more information about volunteering, you can click here to fill out our potential volunteer form and we’ll follow up with you.

Why do we do this?

Whenever people find out how many angels we’ve adopted over the years, one of the first questions they usually ask us is why? So let us explain.

First, we love working with the Angel Tree because we believe that God calls anyone who follows him to be his hands and feet in the world and to show his love to anyone and everyone that we can. The Angel Tree gives us the opportunity to share God’s love not only with the angels that we adopt, but also with their families, and our community.

Second, we believe that Jesus is the greatest gifts God ever gave us when Jesus entered this world to make sure that nothing can stand between us and God. And that’s a gift that is worth celebrating, so we want to help as many people as possible to celebrate Jesus’s birth.

Finally, before our pastor began serving in the ministry, he managed a toy store. He was at this toy store through 4 different Christmas seasons, and saw first hand the struggles that some families had to be able to purchase the gifts their kids wanted at Christmas. And he saw the tears in parents’ eyes when they just couldn’t afford to make some of those purchases. So there were times when he dipped into his own wallet to help then, and we as a church continue to dip into our own resources now to help make kids’ Christmas dreams come true.