The Holiday Shopping Spree & Gift Wrapping Party, A Fun Time For All!

On December 6th Homestretch held its annual Holiday Shopping Spree and Gift Wrapping Party! We had almost 75 children show up, and 25 volunteers to help out with all of the fun!

The Holiday Shopping Spree is a time where we try to teach the children in our program the joy of giving, and not just receiving. Each child gets $10 per member of their family and gets to go throughout Kmart and buy them each a gift for the Holidays. After the Shopping Spree everyone goes over to a local church and wraps their presents, eats snacks, and enjoys the season.

This year’s event was a total success! The children and their families enjoyed it, and the volunteers enjoyed spending time with the children. This event could not be made possible without the help of Kmart in Annandale, Annandale United Methodist Church, Amdocs, and all of the volunteers that came out to help. Thank you!

A Client Says "Thanks" This Thanksgiving Season

My Thanksgiving:

I am grateful for having two wonderful kids.

I am grateful that they were born here.

I am grateful for having met Homestretch.

I am grateful that I can drive to and from my job and to other places like the grocery store and church.

I am grateful for this time in my life when I am able to be proud of myself, and feel great about decisions I made without changing my personality.

I am grateful for having become employed by a great company.

I am grateful for being patient and having good people around me to encourage me and help me wake up when I feel down, especially my therapist, case manager and my mentor Christopher Fay.

I am grateful for my church.

Mostly, I am grateful for the Lord, for having kept me alive all these years, and now I’m having fruits of joy one after the other, and now I believe God is not a man that He can lie.

My thought for the Day:
My life is like a tree, the roots are bitter, the trunk is hard but the fruit is sweet.

These words of thanks were written a week before Thanksgiving by a young woman who was human trafficked and experienced extreme trauma before coming to Homestretch. She is now excelling – working full time while pursuing a nurses’ degree, in the hopes of helping other women who have gone through what she has gone through.