The Kindness of Friends

Happy Giftmas! We here at Operation Awesome are excited to be participating again in Rhonda Parrish's Giftmas blog tour. This year the blog tour is benefitting the Edmonton Food Bank.

We were asked to write stories about our holiday memories associated with food, and here's mine:

My oldest child was born in between my first and second year of graduate school. We lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment in the University of Utah's married student housing complex. My husband worked as a paraprofessional at an elementary school, which covered most of our living expenses. The rest and my tuition were all covered by student loans.

Friends of ours offered to watch our son while we were at school and work for a ridiculously tiny amount of money. But in the middle of November, our arrangement fell apart. My husband decided to quit his job and stay home with our son until I finished school, which was great for our family life but terrible for our bank account.

One night, close to Christmas, we were ding-dong ditched. When we opened our door, we found an envelope with $100 on our doorstep. Later, we found out that someone from our church had given several hundred dollars to our bishop to give to anyone that needed it that Christmas. We were one of a few families chosen to receive some of that gift.

Most of that money went straight into our bank account, but we used some of it to splurge on steaks for our Christmas dinner. It was a welcome break from pasta and rice. Those steaks were probably the most delicious I've ever eaten, because they were seasoned with gratitude for someone who loved us and wanted us to be happy. We took a photo of our dinner, which we ate off our wedding china to make it even more fancy, and every time I come across it on my computer my heart swells with joy at the knowledge that there are good people in the world.

Check out the rest of the stops on the tour for more great stories! I'll have another one up tomorrow on Diamante's blog.

There's also a giveaway for you readers! Woohoo!

a Rafflecopter giveaway