M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

I spent all week waiting for Thursday, when I could open all my Circle of Sisters email to see what great ideas our readers had to help people feel loved and wanted during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. To my dismay, when I opened my email box, there was not one letter I could quote in a family magazine. Every single piece of mail I received this week was spam — most of it sexually oriented.

Talk about a downer!

I did a little detective work to figure out what the problem was, and I finally unearthed a technical glitch that probably caused all your letters to bounce during the week. If you have sent me any letter regarding the topic of making people loved during the holiday season, please send it again. Dig through your outbox, find what you sent me, and forward it to meridianmagazine@aol.com. I know this is a pain in the neck, but there are people who are desperate to hear from you.

If you missed last week's column and don't know what the request was, here it is again:

Thanksgiving and Christmas are the happiest holidays of the year for many of us, but they represent the saddest holidays of the year for others.

Even as you gather your loving family members around you, there are people in your ward who will feel adrift at Thanksgiving time — and, later, at Christmas. These include missionaries who are away from home — although truth be told, missionaries usually get a lot of attention because they're so noticeable. There are other people whose needs are more likely to be overlooked — newlyweds who are too far from home to return to one family or another for the holidays, single people who live far from their own families, empty-nesters whose nestlings are not returning for the season, widows, servicemen, and many others.

If you open your eyes, you'll see people all around you who are dreading the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. These are people that you can help.

If you have found a way to include other people as part of your family gathering at Thanksgiving or Christmas, please send us your ideas. Or if other people have included you and made your own holiday bright, let us know what was done and how it affected you.

Your responses can make a world of difference for people who are about to embark on the saddest time of the year, so I hope you'll write and help others with ideas for how to love their neighbors — member and nonmember alike — during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season. So please send your suggestions to meridianmagazine@aol.com.

Meanwhile, I do have a last nice letter regarding missionary gifts for Christmas. It arrived over the weekend last weekend, before the technical snafu occurred on Monday. Read on for what one reader had to say:

I know most of this is about sending gifts to missionaries serving from your ward somewhere in the world. One idea is to make sure you don't forget those serving within your ward.

Some time ago, I read a suggestion that someone had about contacting your local mission office to see if there were elders/sisters who might need a gift. Also, sometimes the local missionary might not be so much a physical need as an emotional need for strength and support.

I have a couple of ideas for gifts that we can give to local missionaries, though the ideas are buried in some rambling memories:

I wanted to share that back in 1992, when I was serving as a missionary in Eastern Idaho, I received some beautiful gifts. First, due to a transfer that occurred a couple days before Christmas, I was in a brand new area, Blackfoot, Idaho. Change and transfers were usually difficult for me. I was the type who at times called my mission president and would leave a message on his phone to please not transfer me. This transfer in particular was rough for me; I was actually teary in anticipation of this transfer. My wonderful missionary companion was returning home, and though I was happy for her, I would miss working with her. In addition, our area was being closed to sisters.

The first good gift was due to the kindness of a family in a nearby stake: The other sister missionaries in our zone and who served in that stake had been invited to Christmas Eve dinner with that family. They invited us to attend as well. As part of their large family Christmas Eve celebration, they went caroling while on a horse-drawn carriage. They delivered oranges to their neighbors. Upon returning to their home for dinner, they had a Christmas Eve family testimony meeting. As I recall, the lights were dimmed and by candlelight they shared their testimonies of Jesus Christ. As one who grew up in a large metropolitan area, I had never before seen such a way of celebrating Christmas, from the horses to the special testimony meeting.

A second gift involved a material gift: In part due to this transfer, I hadn't received any gift from home. I was totally fine with this, because my family and I tend to procrastinate sending gifts, so more often than not, gifts arrive late. So even without the transfer, my items from home would have probably arrived late. I knew I'd have a gift from home, just not before Christmas. My new companion noticed I didn't have anything and gently inquired about this, and I explained how my family and I are talented gift-sending procrastinators.

What happened next really touched me though at the time it was embarrassing, as I'd always been more of a gift-giver than a gift-receiver. I learned that she mentioned my situation to some of the other missionaries.  So on Christmas Day, I learned that one of the elders had offered her $30 to give me something. Luckily she didn't accept that money. However it touches my heart to this day that one of the elders would make such a kind offer.

The second gift was that one of the elders asked one of the people in his stake (each companionship served in one stake) to provide me with some kind of gift. And so I anonymously received from this family a few items, such as book, perfume from this family. One of the items they gave me was a blue wood heart with a mini candle that says, "Charity Never Faileth" and on the other side it says, "Let Your Light Shine." When the candle in that wood heart fell off, I replaced it with a small Idaho flag to remind me of the love and kindness I felt from those Idahoans on that particular Christmas. The elder refused to provide me the name of the gift giver so that I could thank these people. He said the family didn't want to be revealed. I did write a letter that I hope he gave to them. 

The final gift was especially meaningful, for it is what Christmas is all about: We were given permission to return to my old area to witness a Christmas Day baptism of a young woman. What a special way to celebrate Christmas! And by the time I had received these gifts, I felt I had been renewed and felt at peace in the new area, and I was no longer teary-eyed about having been transferred right before Christmas.

So my take-home message to Meridian is just to find ways to remember and serve the missionaries in your current ward, and to reach out to the others in your local area, you never know when the missionaries might be having a hard time being on a mission.

Juanita in Virginia

Well, Juanita, even though you sent your letter before my request about helping people celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas was published, your experience certainly fit the category. Thanks for writing. Your letter is a reminder that among the people around you are those whose Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays will not be bright unless someone takes them in.

I hope Juanita's letter inspires all of you who have ideas or experiences to help our readers extend Thanksgiving and Christmas to others. Sit down and send us your ideas (or forward the ones you sent to me last week) to the real address — meridianmagazine@aol.com— so I'll get them in time for our next column. Put something in the subject line that will let me know your letter isn't spam. And when you write, be sure to include your full name, city and state or province. (If you'd rather be semi-anonymous, sign your name as “A Reader from Michigan” or “Sandy from Timbuktu.” The important thing is that we hear from you.)

Until next time — Kathy

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it,
for I shall not pass this way again.

Ettiene De Grellet