Share the Spirit serves 989 kids

Editor,

The Board of Directors of Share the Spirit Holiday Assistance would like to thank the people of Lake County for their generosity this Christmas.

This was our ninth year and we served 989 kids from less fortunate families in our county.

From Nov. 1 through Dec. 1, families applied through the churches, school counselors, and county offices for our help. Share the Spirit volunteers used the information on the applications and made tags for our trees which went up throughout the county before Thanksgiving.

People “adopted” kids from the trees and shopped for them returning their gifts to us. We then coordinated lots of willing wrappers and prepared the family gifts and either delivered or arranged for pick up of the gifts.

We are fortunate to collaborate with the Toys for Tots program, Ed Holland and the Hell Roaring Marine Detachment, to distribute the toys they collect to “our” kids. Some of the kids had the excitement and thrill of having their presents delivered by the Charlo and Polson Fire Departments. A special thank you goes out to them and to Martin Olson and Eagle Bank for donating a wonderful space for us to coordinate our efforts and work. Thanks also to all the stores and banks who allowed us to have our trees in their businesses.

We have incredibly wonderful volunteers who come to wrap and sort the gifts. They logged in over 1,000 hours wrapping and sorting the gifts. One of our volunteers, Russ Jenkins, drove 881 miles in three weeks driving around the county to check the trees and replenish the tags every day. Share the Spirit is an all volunteer program and every minute of donated time is vitally important to our success. We are very grateful for everyone’s participation. God bless all of you for making this a success again this year!

Toni Krebsbach Young

Cheryl Thomas

Barbara Morin

Valerie Lindstrom

Nancy Hines

Russ Jenkins

Polson