The Orange County Rescue Mission was about 150 donated gifts shy heading into Saturday's “Magic at the Mission” event in Tustin, where formerly homeless families living in the charity's transitional living facility, the Village of Hope, celebrate the holiday season with games, trucked-in snow and an appearance by a special visitor from the north.
Despite the late notice, volunteers are not likely to turn anyone away who brings presents to 1 Hope Drive, Tustin, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. today or Saturday.
“The holidays are a time for giving. For our residents at the Village of Hope, this season is also a symbol of hope for future,” says Jim Palmer, Rescue Mission president. “These families are working to get their lives back on track, and being able to provide gifts to their children while enjoying the holiday together is just one small step toward achieving that goal.”
Orange County Rescue Mission currently has the highest population of children and families at the Village of Hope in the organization’s history, Palmer notes.
“For many of these families, this will be the first year that they will be able to share gifts with their loved ones,” he adds.
The mission offers a list of suggested gift donations.
Newborn & Toddler:
Musical or light-up toys
Stacking toys
Shape sorters
Rattles
Teethers
Textured blocks and/or balls
Infant seats
Books
Stuffed animals
Kids Ages 8+:
Board games
Craft kits
Coloring books, papers, crayons, and/or pencils
Playing cards
Puzzles
Books
Journals
Legos
Yo-Yos
Soccer balls
Also Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., more than 1,500 Operation Christmas Child volunteers are expected to visit the Orange County Processing Center in Irvine, where more than 925,000 gifts of toys, school supplies, hygiene items and notes of encouragement contained in shoeboxes will pass through. There to greet volunteers at the center will be Nanor Balabanian, a high school history teacher in the U.S., who received a gift box when she was 8 and living in the war-torn Middle East. Balabanian will tell the volunteers about the impact the gifts made on her life.
To sign up to volunteer at the center, call 704.432.7030 or visit http://www.samaritanspurse.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.