Clothe-A-Child & food gifting take extra effort in 2020

Pastor Keenan Smith and fellow ministers of Crosby Church huddle as the second wave of volunteers prepares to start helping folks that need a little extra help this year preparing for Christmas. In total 2020 has been a challenging year.
Pastor Keenan Smith and fellow ministers of Crosby Church huddle as the second wave of volunteers prepares to start helping folks that need a little extra help this year preparing for Christmas. In total 2020 has been a challenging year.

CROSBY – The year 2020 has been a tough one on those that host charities and to those that benefit from them. This includes one of the local favorites, Cloth-A-Child, developed to help school-aged kids enjoy some of the blessings that many take for granted.

For the last 16 weeks, Crosby church A Fellowship of Believers has taken in what food they could get donated and handed it out to waiting families from their central campus on US 90. That program now occurs on Mondays and begins at about 3:00 p.m., but the lineup is now beginning at noon. Pastor Keenan Smith has seen the program go from prepackaged relief boxes to volunteer assembly of food stuffs. It has become more difficult to say if the products are better or worse than in the past; for example, entire tenderloins and lamb parts from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo have been arriving.

Monday and Tuesday of this week, Clothe-A-Child brings those in need of help presenting Christmas close to those that want to help others, as the helpers are to shepherd the needy into an effective use of $100 and get the kids a toy. Monday in Atascocita, Tuesday in Crosby.

According to Pastor Keenan Smith’s observation, “Some people ask, ‘Is that all I’m gonna get from you?’ while others have tears of gratitude in their eyes.”

“It has been a real learning experience for me, not that I didn’t know people were like that but how close to the surface it has always been amazes me.”

“It is smaller this year, you know, we didn’t get as much, so we tried to cut back on the number of volunteers by having them register, that kind of worked too well. I have less volunteers than I need tonight so we are running two sections, tonight.”

Participants of both sides excitedly awaited their turn to begin and were off to the childrens’ departments in a dash.