Gifts of Love: How Your Spare Change Can Give a Family a Goat

What can a jar of loose change do? In the hands of our children, it can become a goat, a hen and her chicks, or a brighter future for a family on the other side of the world. Every November, the children of Triumphant Cross collect donations for Lutheran World Relief Gifts of Love, and they need your help.

Small Change, Big Difference

Gifts of Love is a giving catalog from Lutheran World Relief, the international relief and development ministry of Lutherans in the United States. The catalog lets you choose gifts that help families in Africa, Asia, and Latin America lift themselves out of poverty. Our children focus on farm animals, and the prices show how far a little goes:

• Hen and chicks: $80
• Goat: $100

Livestock are more than a gift for one meal. As Lutheran World Relief explains, animals are critical economic assets for families, who care for them as a source of their livelihoods. A goat can provide milk, and a hen keeps laying eggs. Each gift also includes the training and support families need to succeed, so the blessing grows and multiplies over time.

Each Gift of Love is symbolic. Your donation supports the whole mission of Lutheran World Relief and is used where the need is greatest.

Bring Your Change Every Sunday in November

Here’s how you can help: bring your loose change (or paper bills!) to church every Sunday in November, on November 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29. The children will be collecting, and every coin counts. Check under the couch cushions, empty the cup holder in your car, or set aside a few dollars from your week.

Jesus noticed a poor widow who put two small coins into the temple treasury and said she had given more than all the others (Mark 12:41-44). God does great things with small gifts given in love.

Teaching Generosity Together

Gifts of Love is also a wonderful way for our children to learn that faith is lived out by caring for our neighbors, near and far. When they count up the coins at the end of the month and see a goat or chickens on the way to a family in need, they see the Gospel at work.

Join the children of Triumphant Cross Lutheran Church this November and help turn spare change into gifts of love.