Charity

My fingers that lay across the top of my blankets were frozen and my breath was forming white clouds in the air. I didn't want to get out of bed, but I was hungry. Maybe if I made it into the cabin quickly enough, I would get to the warm spot behind the stove before anyone else did. Rubbing my hands together for warmth, I made a brave leap from beneath my sleeping bag and quilts into the frosty air. I scrambled over the pile of boxes that surrounded my bed on three sides and jerked the door of the cabin open. Drat! I was too late! Michael sat huddled in the only truly warm spot in the cabin – the space between the side wall and the pack stove. Dad had scraped up enough money to insulate the walls, but he could not afford drywall to cover the insulation. I knew Michael would come away from the wall itchy and red because of the fiberglass in the insulation. I also knew that on a day as cold as today, it would be worth it.

Mom was making pancakes. She had set a can of Crisco on the top of the pack stove to melt down the last bits of shortening with which to grease the griddle.

As I shut the door, I noticed that Pam was using the arm of our only chair as a resting place for a bowl. With dismay, I realized she was mixing together cinnamon and sugar. “Are we out of powdered sugar?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said, shortly.

“Do we have any butter?”

“No.”

“What about maple flavoring?”

“Nope.”

“Great,” I thought sarcastically, “Dry pancakes with sugar granules again. Yummy.”

I walked past Dale, who had been put to work grinding wheat with our hand grinder, and took a seat on the floor in the least drafty spot I could find. As I sat down, my eyes fell on the one bright spot in our cabin. We had not been able to afford a tag to cut down a Christmas tree like we had done in years past, so we had used a hand saw to cut down one of the many trees on our property. It was the smallest tree we had ever had. It sat atop a pile of boxes that we had covered with a green sheet. It was decorated with the same homemade Christmas ornaments we used every year and, despite the lack of pretty lights due to us not having electricity, it looked quite festive.

I had added my own special touch to the tree. I had only two dollars to buy gifts with. I spent all of it to get my brothers and my Dad each a handkerchief. For Pam, I found a green birthstone pin among a box of my grandmother's things. For Mom, I made coupons promising to cook, do the dishes and scrape mud from the cabin floor. All of these gifts I wrapped in paper left over from last year. It was wrinkled, but it still looked pretty. Because my gifts were so small, I taped ribbons to them and hung them from the branches of the tree like someone had done in a book I read.

I smiled at my little gifts. They weren't much, but it felt nice to give.

After breakfast, Pam disappeared onto the porch and reappeared holding two little blue boxes. The boxes were covered in tiny pink hearts and through clear plastic windows could be seen dainty dolls with dark brown hair. Stuffed around the dolls in every corner of each box were five fancy dresses, a coat and matching hat made from scraps of real wool, and a pair of white pajamas dotted with pretty pink flowers.

I smiled when I saw the boxes. Every year since I was nine, Mom had taken Pam and I to the store a few months before Christmas to pick out a doll for a needy child. We then took the doll home and made clothes for it before giving it to our church leaders whom, we knew, would find the perfect home for it.

“It's a good thing we bought these dolls before we moved,” I said, “We'd never be able to afford to buy them now.”

“It's a good thing we sewed clothes for them already, too,” Pam replied, “Since we can't do much sewing here.”

Pam set the dolls down. “I found some buttons and things that we can add to the clothes to make them prettier,” she said.

Excited, I jumped up and ran to my bed to retrieve my heart-shaped sewing box. Pam followed me onto the porch and began rummaging in one of the many boxes surrounding her bed. She pulled out brightly colored odds and ends. I recognized them as scraps from my grandma's shed. Once a year she cleaned out her shed and sent the things she no longer needed to us in hopes that we could use them. I was delighted with the treasures Pam produced and for the first time I was glad that we could no longer afford the storage shed where all of our things had been kept, waiting for a house to put them in. If we hadn't been forced to stumble over boxes for the last few months, Pam might never have found the pretty notions we needed to put the finishing touches on the dolls' clothes.

Pam and I passed the afternoon hand sewing a flower here and a ribbon there. Before we knew it, it was time to go to mutual. The dolls were placed carefully back in their boxes and I ran to get my coat and gloves. As I pulled on my gloves, I sighed. The lining in my left glove had torn and come out. I sometimes wondered if my hands would be warmer without my gloves.

When we arrived at the church, Pam and I proudly handed the dolls to our Young Womens leaders. They complimented us on our fine work. I beamed when Sister Olsen told me, “Some little girl is going to absolutely fall in love with this doll!”

Mutual that night consisted of wrapping gifts for three needy families. As I joyfully set about cutting, taping and folding, I overheard the girl next to me say, “I have been wrapping gifts all week! I am sick of wrapping!” My heart sank a little inside my chest. I knew that my parents could not afford to buy us gifts. We had had many lean Christmases, but this one was going to be the worst. I thought to myself, “It's a good thing Michael is old enough to know there is no such thing as Santa, because he will not be coming this year.”

A week passed and Christmas drew nearer. It was time for mutual again. I knew we were going caroling that night and we were going to pass out our gifts to the needy families. I was irritable as I pulled on my gloves. I was tired of being cold! Mutual was usually held in the warmth of our church building, but not tonight.

When we arrived at the church, we were split into three groups consisting of Young Women, Boy Scouts and Leaders. My groups leader was Sister Olsen. We piled into her van and drove to a park full of shabby looking trailers just outside of town. Sister Olsen pulled a bag of gifts and a few other things from the van as we climbed out into the falling snow. The bitter cold wind blew in our faces. I shivered and shoved my left hand into my coat pocket.

We stopped at every trailer and sang carols. We saw faces peeking at us through windows and doorways. It was nice to see so many people smiling.

At last, we came to the trailer of our needy family. We stood outside singing until a young woman opened the door. Peeking shyly out from behind her legs were two little brunette heads. The kids smiled and laughed as we sang “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer” for them. When the song was over, Sister Olsen asked the woman if we could come in and read stories to her children. She agreed and opened the door wide. My breath caught in my throat as we entered the house. The living room was completely bare except for a rocking chair and a Christmas tree. There were no presents beneath the tree, which was decorated with popcorn and paper chains.

Sister Olsen handed the bag of gifts to one of the Scouts and said, “We've brought you a few things.”

Tears came to my eyes as I watched the boy open the bag and hand the children gift after gift. The siblings squealed with excitement as they ran back and forth from the gift giver to the tree, laying each gift carefully beneath the branches. Sister Olsen tried to hand the mother a ham with a big red bow on top, but the mother sank down in her rocking chair and cried as she watched her delighted children running to and fro.

One of the Scouts took the ham to the kitchen as the last of the gifts was put into small, eager hands. My heart leaped as I realized it was the doll I had given and wrapped. I knew that Sister Olsen was right, this little girl who seemed to have nothing, would fall in love with it.

I hastily wiped the tears from my eyes, hoping that no one would notice, but as I looked around, I found that no one had a dry eye.

Sister Olsen asked the children if they would like to hear a story. Clapping and dancing with excitement, they climbed onto their mother's lap. I released a fresh flood of tears as that innocent little girl reached up and wiped her mother's eyes.

We sat down at the foot of the rocking chair and Sister Olsen knelt where the children could see the pictures in the Christmas story. I do not remember the names of the two books she read that night, but I do remember I was warmer than I had ever been in my life.

When Pam and I arrived home that night, we were surprised to find that the third group of carolers had visited our cabin. Mom said they did not all come up because of the steepness of our hill, but the Scout leaders had carried the gifts to the cabin. I studied the items that had been brought. There was a bag of presents and a box of food that would make our Christmas dinner much more pleasant. There was also a quilt that I was sure the Relief Society sisters had made. If we had received these gifts a day sooner, I would not have been surprised, but after witnessing the humble circumstances of that single mother and her two young children, I wanted to say “Take it back, someone needs this more than we do.”

Moroni 1

46 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—

47 But charity is the pure blove of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.