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Gilbert-area Catholics bring Christmas joy to Indian reservation
By Ambria Hammel, ahammel@catholicsun.org
January 1, 2009
HIGLEY — It’s been said that good things come in small sizes.
For 200 students at St. Peter Indian Mission School in Bapchule and their families, good things also come in a 35-foot moving truck.
Parishioners at St. Mary Magdalene, who temporarily gather as a community at a Higley grade school, filled the truck Dec. 21 with nearly everything on the students’ wish lists, plus hundreds of gift cards for their families.
A handful of Knights of Columbus from the parish’s council, alongside their families, delivered the gifts a few hours later. The six Franciscan sisters who staff the K-8 school were thrilled to see Christmas become a reality for their students.
“All the gifts and the depth of that truck — just amazing,” said Sr. Martha Mary Carpenter, the school’s principal.
Tim Walters, a Knight of Columbus who spearheaded the effort, was amazed too.
He noticed donors dropping off a bike for their adopted student plus several other gifts. Walters saw nine new bikes and some 750 wrapped gifts before the day was over.
Parishioners also donated more than 400 gift cards totaling $20,000, with half valued at $50 or more. Donors dropped off another $200 in cash.
“People basically adopt a child or a family,” Walters said. They shopped for strangers within their Church family as if they were a part of their own immediate family.
“The idea is to get one of these,” Walters said pointing to one child’s list of needs, wants, hobbies and clothing and shoe sizes. “We got people bringing all of these.”
Marjorie Roberts was one of them. She brought gifts for eight students at the mission school simply because she knew the kids on the Indian reservation needed help. Her daughter did the shopping and Roberts took care of the wrapping.
That meant wrapping a complete outfit — down to the socks and underwear — for each child, something that the student needed as well as something that the child wanted.
Roberts bought one child a pair of eyeglasses to help his vision and tried to donate educational toys as much as possible.
The sisters helped unload the gifts which left all nine tables in the school’s 5,100-square-foot library overflowing with wrapped toys and clothes. They lined up the new bikes in one corner of the library and filled three small tables in another corner with gift cards.
Sr. Martha unloaded a small rolling suitcase among other gifts. She was happy to know that one of her seventh-graders who is routinely between homes will no longer have to carry his clothes to school in a paper sack.
“Children are absolutely amazed that they get what they asked for,” Sr. Martha said.
This marks the third year St. Mary Magdalene parishioners brought Christmas to the reservation.
Sr. Martha said the parents are also taken aback.
“Mostly the parents thank us when they’re crying,” Sr. Martha said. “This just makes Christmas for them when their children can be happy and receive something.”
The sisters spent the next day and a half sorting through the gifts to prepare them for distribution — both at the Christmas Mass and by special delivery.
“The first year that we did this Sr. Martha said there were about 50 families who had never seen Christmas before,” Walters said.
Thanks to the generosity of St. Mary Magdalene parishioners, St. Peter students now experience Christmas every year.
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