Our Season of Service

Inspired by some friends of our family, the Marshall family has decided to try a new way of exchanging Christmas gifts in 2012. We hope it will become a wonderful family tradition.
For years, the four Marshall children, their spouses, and their parents exchanged gifts every Christmas, but in 2011, we decided the gift-giving tradition may need a change since we are all so blessed and in need of truly nothing. We decided we needed to find a better way to celebrate the true Christmas spirit.

We suggested that we each perform acts of service in the name of the sibling whose name we were assigned at random. Our service will be kept a secret until Christmas Day.

Our friend drew the names for us and notified each of us privately of the person who should inspire our service. On Christmas Day, we reveal who we were given and how we chose to serve by posting our stories on The Marshall Family Season of Service blog.

We hope this tradition will help us focus on serving our communities and each other during the annual celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We invite you to come back to our blog on Christmas morning to read this year's service.

Monday, December 25, 2017

2017 Craig & Heidi Marshall Family Service

This year we had a number of service opportunities some planned and some fell into our laps. One of the things we did as a family was to participate in a coat drive for refugees. We took the kids a local thrift store and each child picked out a coat that they thought a cold child would like to have. They made some great finds and we came away with some really nice coats to donate to a good cause. Unfortunately I realized after I left that may own kids need new coats aw well. HaHa we will have to save that for another trip.


The next service that fell not fell into our laps this year, literally, was the rescue of a starving cat. The kids found her int he backyard so emaciated you could feel all her bones. We started to feed her and then a few weeks later our rescue once cat became 4 when she brought 3 kittens into the garage. The kids had a great time taking care of them and in the end earned $10 apiece for raising their kittens and now we have a new fuzzy member of our family.



For Heidi's service we decided to spruce up the mothers lounge at church. There is no clock, mirror, or privacy curtain in our lounge. So, we have purchased the items and plan to install them soon. We also donated to the medical fund of our friends brother who was recently diagnosed with colon cancer.

Merry Christmas!  I am grateful for the teachings of Jesus Christ in my life. I am grateful that they guide us to find greater meaning on our life as we serve others an make the world a happier place to live.

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