Santa's Sleigh Toy & Food Drive 2009

Well, it's that time of year when we start thinking about our friends of the Native American Reservations and how we can be of service to them. The "Santa's Sleigh Toy and Food Drive" is set up to deliver a message of hope and bring joy to children of low income families in the Native American communities. We will once again travel to the Navajo Nation to an area called Tsaile, AZ on December 18 to have our celebration with these wonderful people on Saturday, Dec. 19. Again we will be working with the local WIC (Women, Infant and Children) office to guarantee that we are being of service to those that are most in need of this coming Christmas Season. The majority of the people that we will be helping live in small dwellings, huts, and tents with No running water and some without electricity. We are hoping to gift 250 children and 100 families.

The "Santa's Sleigh toy and food drive consists of four programs to help those in need. And is an opportunity for everyone of all ages to participate and receive great satisfaction by being able to make the holiday's more enjoyable for those less fortuante while focusing on the true meaning of Christmas, Jesus Christ! The three programs are as follows:

1) Toy Drive- Is a collection of NEW, UNWRAPPED toys for all children ages infant to 13 years of age. You adopt a child for the Christmas celebration and you will receive the childs name, age and gender. You purchase one brand new toy for this child, deliver it to us UNWRAPPED and marked with the child and mothers name on it.

2) Food Box- Adopt a Native American Family and provide a "Food Box" gift for Christmas Day. Deliver to us in the appropriate box for packing purposes. Include all the following items:

1- 7 lb Canned Ham
1- 14 oz box of instant mashed potatoes
1- 14 oz can of brown gravy
2 each -14oz cans of corn, green beans, and peas
1- 2 lb bag of pinto beans
1- 2 lb bag of white or brown rice
1- 2 lb bag of self rising flour or corn meal
1- 1 lb box of oatmeal
1- 1 lb bag of sugar
4- 10 oz cans of milk
1- 1 lb box of saltine crackers
4- 10 oz cans of soup
1- 22 oz jelly
1- 28 oz of peanut butter

The packing box needs to be approzimately 16x12x12. You may fill the box with additional items if you have extra room, but please do not go any larger on the packing box, When adding additional items please remember to people that we are helping have no running water, and a few have no electricity and many use wood burning stoves to cook. Some additional items they could use are: candles, matches, granola or fruit bars, canned fruit, hot chocolate, coffee, juice, salt, beef jerky, canned meat (NO FISH!), cookies, applesauce, and medical items (band-aids, tylenol, cough drops, vapor-rub). We can also use large bags of apples, oranges, potatoes & onions to pass out.

3) Winter Collections- Is a collection of NEW children and adult size blankets/quilts, hats, scarves, gloves, socks/booties, children's underwear/panties and gently used clean winter coats (all sizes).

4) Hygiene Kits- We are in need of 100 Hygiene kits. If you would like to donate them or money to go towards them, please let me know.

All collections will be collected till December 14. If you are interested in contributing to one of the three programs, would like to volunteer to assemble and pack, would like to give a monetary gift to go towards the programs, travel with us to the Navajo Nation or would like to donate a trailer or moving truck for this one trip, please contact Lori Pavicic @ home #435-654-1658 or cell #801-473-4349. Thank you!

Literacy-Back to School Drive Thank You

We wanted to take a moment to say, THANK YOU for all the wonderful book bags, school supplies and books that each and everyone of you gifted the Navajo children in Tsaile, AZ. We took 630 new and mostly handmade book bags filled with new school supplies. The school supplies included folders, filler paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, crayons, markers, color pencils, sharpeners, rulers, scissors, glue, calculators, and mini chalkboards w/erasers. We also donated about 4,500 used, fun reading books to the school. Each child was able to pick out three books to take home with them as their own. The rest were donated to the teacher's and the school library. Michael and I appreciate everyone seeing the vision that God has laid on our family's heart and sharing in it. We felt such an overwhelming show of support with your thoughtfullness, kindness and willingness to care about a great people that are in need. By each of us being obedient to God's call (1 Samuel 15:22) we were all able to pull our resources together and be a much larger blessing that just Michael and I could have done on our own.

We also want to say a special "Thank You" to the two young men who chose our charity for their "Eagle Scout Project", Jonathan Hodge of Lehi and Jared Butler of Alpine. Both young men did a wonderful job of collecting book bags, school supplies and books. We wish you the best as you work towards your "Eagle"! And of course we could not have gifted the children with so many books if we had not had the support of "World Wide Books" wich once again donated several thousand books to our literacy program- Thank You!