(Seguin) – When it comes to illustrating the meaning of Christmas, there is no lack of evidence here in Seguin. Volunteers with the now 7th Annual Feed My Sheep event have spent the last couple of days sorting through the piles and piles of gifts all to be distributed during this Thursday’s holiday event at the Columbus Hall of Seguin.
Approximately 100 local families are set to be delivered a reminder of the Christmas spirit during the special drive through event in which they will receive gifts and a food voucher.
Heading up the effort are members of the Seguin Veterans Ministry and St. James Catholic Church.
After being involved with a similar event at a former church, Deacon Victor Garcia shortly began the program here at St. James. He says each of the families served were identified by service agencies who all felt that those clients could use the most help.
Garcia says upon identifying those families, congregation members, over the last couple of weeks, have been pulling names off of an Angel tree and have been shopping for gifts for each person.
“Our belief is that the agencies know who their people are and then they send us back part of the application form and based on that application form, we take the information off with not their names but their ages and sex and then we create those little angels and put them in our tree and then our parishioners, we have two weekends when they can pick an angel off the tree and they go buy the gifts and then they bring them to us,” said Garcia.
Garcia says despite whatever hardships or challenges they may be going through, this effort is simply to let the families know that their community loves them.
“It’s not just St. James that does it. We have members of Our Lady of Guadalupe who help us. They also get some of the angels. The American Legion has picked up a couple of angels so different organizations within the community help us with some of this also. It’s a real community effort. That’s really what I would like to say about what we do. That’s why we want to go to the agencies and work with them, develop that relationship and then we get to do this work in getting the angels, the gifts bought and everything. It’s just not the church doing it. The Disabled American Veterans gives us some names. The veteran’s office here this year, I think, has provided us with a couple of names. The Community Council (of South-Central Texas) especially has been very good, the (Guadalupe Valley Family Violence Shelter) women’s shelter, the South Texas Pregnancy (Care Center) — we just get a good community effort in this,” said Garcia.
Garcia says not only is the effort to lend a hand to the community but it’s also to bring awareness that there are people who need our help year-round.
“What I would like for the community to know is that we have the needs here in our own community and for us what has made this successful is that the response from the community has just really helped us. We have really never struggled with trying to meet the needs out there and truth is there is probably more of a need but the community, the poor to me will always be with us so we are faith-based organization and that is what we are called to do is to take care of the needy in our community and this is our way of doing it,” said Garcia.
In addition to their gifts, the selected families on Thursday will be treated to cookies and a special visit with Santa.