One of the most unusual and touching Christmas Jar stories ever

(Name withheld)

I have enjoyed reading your books, your stories always seem to be so personable and have a wonderful message. I'm writing you today to let you know of my Christmas Jar experiences for 2007 and 2008. My family read both Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters last year and we decided to start a jar of our own. In 2007 we collected change throughout the year and involved our children. Our children were excited to deposit their extra change and they did understand what the money would go towards. We went through the process of chosing someone to receive the jar and we decided on a friend who was facing tough times as most of us do. We did a drive by late at night, rang the doorbell and got back into the car as fast as we could and drove away. After the drop off, we felt very good about what we were able to accomplish and starting another jar the next day.

Fast forward to 2008 and the month is September. We have had trials arrive into our lives this year but our jar at this point had almost one hundred dollars that consisted of bills and coins. We needed to pay a few bills so we used the Christmas jar and left an IOU inside with the amount. The next day we started filling the jar back up and within a month we had almost fifty dollars collected, we had another bill pop up and we once again "borrowed" the money from the jar and put in another IOU.

We are now on our third jar and fast forward now to the beginning of November. I was talking to my wife on the weekend and we were talking about our financial trials and I expressed to my wife that using the money from the jar to pay the bills was hard because it felt like stealing.

Mr. Wright I quickly realized something, I WAS helping a family, I was helping my OWN family through our tough times. Our family was struggling this year and your wonderful idea, our new tradition helped so much and we as a family learned so much from this experience.

I know that this is not the usual Christmas Jar story that you receive but my wife and I wanted you to know that we again enjoy your stories and the true message of giving and thank you for a new tradition that we have and an opportunity to serve others. We were very humbled this year and our Christmas Jar was able to provide a way for us to make our bills. We hope to have enough money in our new jar so we can deliver to someone in need during the holidays because we know that we have been blessed because we have served others in the past. Merry Christmas and we look forward to any new books or traditions that you may have in the future.