For our service project this year, we decided to be a Secret Santa to someone. We got them 12 gifts for 12 days of Christmas. We decided to do it for Makaela Berger because she has been having a hard time lately. We noticed she’s been feeling down and that she’s been worried about not having enough money. We wanted to do something to help her out financially and also lift her spirits. We wrote a poem to go along with each gift and dropped it off at her house, ding-dong ditch style, each night. It was exciting to keep it a secret and to go through the effort of staying anonymous. At first she thought it was someone from her ward, like her Relief Society president, but there were times that she suspected it was us, especially after we gave her Dallas Cowboys playing cards and a board game (Whoops!). We went through extra lengths to try to appear innocent. We thought that casually sharing locations with her would help us know where she waa so that we wouldn’t get caught dropping off the gifts. Unfortunately, we realized after the fact that now she could see where Shelby was too (Double Whoops!). So now we do things like leave her phone in an unsuspecting location as we dropped off her gift. We even tried extra hard to throw her off the scent by having Linlea drop off one of the presents while we were with Makaela. It was awesome to see how excited she was to get these presents. She especially loved the Dallas Cowboys playing cards. She said it was one of the best gifts she has ever gotten. Over the course of the rest of the 12 days of Christmas, we could see how happy this little gesture made her and we are glad we served her this way.
Since we are also poor college students, we couldn’t give her much, but as we know- Makaela is super grateful for even $5 extra dollars for dog sitting. So, we knew that she loves and appreciates even the smallest gestures.
We are so grateful for this present that you ask for each year. As we struggled to figure out what we wanted to do, a few ideas came to mind. But when we thought about this one, we got really excited. Even though we don’t need to every time we serve someone, it was nice to see the joy that we brought to someone that we love and care about. It made it extra exciting. It made me start thinking about how Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ feel when we serve others. They know us and love us more than we could ever know so when we serve someone else (one of their children/siblings), they are so so happy.
We love this Gospel and we love you both so much. We just watched a movie about a sick girl that said, as she was dying, “if our family continues to choose the right and follow Heavenly Father, we will be together forever”. We know this is true and we are grateful that you guys made choosing the right and following Heavenly Father a priority so that we all can be together forever. We love you. Merry Christmas!
Love, Shelby and Jared
