Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Lasting Gifts

Our tutoring director Lauren celebrated her birthday on Monday, and last night she joined our family for some late-night birthday cake. Following the rituals of candles, party hats and presents we turned our attention to the large stack of boxes on our living room floor. Lauren, Richard and I, and our housemate Heather each took a pair of scissors and started joyfully cutting through Amazon packing tape. We have had ONE HUNDRED books donated, as well as $250 in cash and gift cards. Praise God for the generosity of his people!

As we opened boxes last night we quickly fell to reminiscing about our own childhood and teen favorites. The ones we didn't think much of at first but later came to love, the ones that inspired us to collect the entire series, the tattered and yellowed ones we have passed down to our own kids, and the ones we miss because they are lost in our parents home somewhere. What a blessing our full bookshelves provided over the years!

Please pray for our Christmas Booksale on Saturday. Pray that all of our Adventures Ahead families will be able to come and that they will find just the right book for each of their children, from the babies on up to the teenagers. And pray that someday our students will sit in a living room with their own adult friends and reminisce fondly about some of these books you all have shared with them!

One of our partners shared a poem with us that captures the longterm blessing we hope these gifts will become. We hope you enjoy Diana's verse as much as we did!

Lasting Gifts

(A Tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson and Hans Christian Andersen)

by Diana Axelson


For Christmas nineteen forty-two,

Gracie got a Toni doll

From Macy’s downtown flagship store,

For in those days there was no mall.

A Davy Crockett coonskin cap

Delighted Gracie’s brother Ed,

Although it soon spent far more time

Upon the floor than on his head.

Though Santa brought more games and toys,

He also brought some books,

But fairy tales and poetry

Got only cursory glancing looks.


Decades later, a different tale:

Ed and Gracie, old and frail,

Drank their tea and reminisced

About the gifts that now they missed.

“That ‘Garden of Verses,’” Eddie sighed,

“’The Little Match Girl’—how I cried,”

Said Gracie, and they both agreed

Of doll and cap they had no need;

What each now wanted for her-/himself

Was Stevenson, Andersen—on the shelf!


The faddish toys will soon grow old,

Become uncool and leave us cold.

No matter where or how you look,

The best gift always is a book.

So for holiday season zero nine,

May you get great books and nothing swine.


Monday, December 7, 2009

Adventures Ahead Christmas Bookstore

One of our goals at the Adventures Ahead tutoring program is help kids develop a life-long love of reading. Not just an ability to decode and comprehend, but a LOVE for reading itself. All kids are challenged by the mechanics of reading, skills that must be practiced and learned over time. But for our students, many of whom are learning English as a second language, these challenges often overshadow the fun and joy that a good story offers. This Christmas we want to help our kids' families to enjoy books together!

On December 19th our tutoring center will open for one day as a "Christmas Bookstore" where Adventures Ahead parents can purchase fun, engaging books to read with their kids. We will be selling donated new books at a very steep discount for parents to give their kids as gifts. We hope to collect at least 75 books at a variety of reading levels, including many titles in Spanish.

Would you like to participate? You can donate a book by having it shipped to the address below, or sending an Amazon gift card via email. We have published a wishlist that you can view online for ideas.

Please pray that God will provide a great selection of books, that our booksale will be a festive event, and that our kids will indeed grow to love reading.

If you would like to donate a book, please have it shipped to:
Adventures Ahead Christmas Bookstore
2706 Brighton Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90018

Or you can email a giftcard from Amazon.com and let us know what book you'd like us to order. Just make sure it gets to us by Tuesday, December 15th.
email address: anna@redeemercp.org