Gift 12 ~ Birthday Poem / Christmas Crafts

In this chapter Cami begins by talking about her addition to Post-It Notes which helps her with her difficulty remembering things. She puts all her gifts-related Post-Its into a notebook she labels "29 Gifts." This will a place to capture all the important things she'll want to remember later. Though she doesn't consider herself a writer, she started writing as a kid and submitted her first article by age 11, has three half-done novels, and wrote an award-winning blog that attracted a lot of traffic. he used to write a Cami gives Gift #12 on March 30 to her friend Nick at his birthday party. Nick, a poetry lover, asked everyone to bring some creative writing to read out loud. Cami brought a poem she had written a while back. Everyone thought she was a good writing, and it made her feel a surge of possibility to truly embrace herself as a writer.

My gift today is to help a local youth ministry prepare for a couple upcoming events. The first was to help with a request that had gone out to collect newspapers and magazines for a project that some confirmation students would be working on. It just so happened that I started collected some for the last couple weeks as a way to "go green" and possibly even help my son, a confirmation candidate himself, meet his service hours goal by coordinating a newspaper collection drive (no worries, now he'll be helping serve breakfast and clean up at the St. Nick breakfast:). My other gift was to spend a couple hours preparing crafts for this Sunday's St. Nick breakfast. The idea is to have all the pieces in a zip-lock baggie for children to make a gingerbread St. Nick decoration to take home with them. This entails cutting out foam shapes, counting out the right number of beads etc. I know the gift of time and service will be appreciated by the kids! And, this provided an opportunity to get to know other members of the youth ministry much better. Looking forward to this Sunday!