White Elephant Gift

My church was doing a White Elephant gift exchange on New Years Eve. I felt prompted by the Father to include a Dyed4you silk called Joyful Praise in the mix. I sensed He knew EXACTLY where He wanted it to go and that it would end up with the person He intended it for. I love seeing Him work in apparent chaos!

For those of you who have never participated in a White Elephant gift exchange, here’s how it works:

1. Everyone who wants to participate brings a gift
2. All the gifts are placed in one location
3. Each person is given a number
4. Each person consecutively gets a gift – they can either take one of the unwrapped ones or “steal” one from someone who has already opened it
5. If your gift is stolen, you may get another gift – again either a wrapped one or you can “steal” one
6. It ends when all gifts are unwrapped and everyone has a gift

I ended up with some Women Arise oil from the Scent of Heaven, so I confess I was a pretty happy camper! I did end up sharing several of them – including giving the Deborah oil to Tonya as a gift since she was so selflessly the hero in the story I’m about to share… so let me get to it!

The story begins with Deanne (who had seen the unwrapped silk at my house the evening) telling me she was planning to get my gift. Only Katie (who had a lower number than her and ALSO so the unwrapped gift) got to it first! That’s where the story starts in the picture above – Deanne is in the black sitting next to Katie – I love the look on their faces 🙂

Next Joshua does what every good husband would do for his wife and steals the silk from Katie to give to Deanne.

Then Josh (following Joshua’s lead) steals the scarf from Joshua for his wife Hannah (who actually is the only woman in this story who didn’t already have at least one Dyed4you silk).

No worries they’re too good of friends to really be upset 😉 Plus it’s the nature of the game.

Hannah reading the scarf letter and admiring the scarf (and becoming attached).

Then Matt (Katie’s hubby) stole it back! We found out later they’d planned to give it back to Hannah later – Matt was just keeping the game lively 😉

Hannah was feeling silk separation 😉

Then Tonya jumped into the mix and stole the silk from Matt!

But a couple minutes later when what Matt had replaced the silk with got stolen, He stole it right back.

Josh jumps back in and steals it back for his wife, who promptly hides it behind her back in an effort to keep it from being stolen again!

Pastor Jim keeps the game lively though by promptly stealing it!

He then turned around and gave it to Tonya, who a couple moves earlier had stolen a hat that Jim wanted (and had had stolen from him) and gave it back to him.

And Tonya then gave the silk back to Hannah 🙂

Hannah thanking Tonya at the end of the game for giving her the silk. She was so happy.

Everyone was happy for Hannah… really they were! LOL 🙂

And when I got home this was Hannah’s Facebook status:

Becoming the proud owner of a Dyed4you silk scarf made by my beautiful friend Meghan, given to me by the lovely and incredibly thoughtful Tonya TOTALLY made my night!!!! It made me even more optimistic about the coming year than I already was! Thanks for a lovely evening, Yahweh. 🙂

And she’s sent this message to me which she later ok’d for me to share with you. A little background here is that her mother-in-law was killed quite suddenly when she was thrown from a horse (about the same timeHannah found out they were expecting their first child). His mother was young and in good health so it was a huge shock to the family! And there’s been other things in conjunction with the tragedy that have made this a very difficult period. And FYI – PFT is our church (Passion for Truth). I think you’ll enjoy her story:

As we were leaving PFT, I remembered why I hadn’t ordered one of your scarves yet. I saw a bunch of ladies at PFT wearing them, and I TOTALLY had “scarf envy”. So I went to your website, actually multiple times, to look at your prices and designs and I was going to order one. But every time, I just felt really weird ordering for myself. I kind of felt like I just needed to be patient and that I would probably be given one. True story. Did not make that up.

And I know you had no idea who would end up with the scarf, but it could not have been any more perfect for me. 2011 kind of stunk for Josh and me, especially the past 6 months or so, and I’ve had a feeling that 2012 is going to be VERY exciting and awesome.

I’ve been feeling renewed and refreshed just THINKING about the new year, and I’ve been asking that Yahweh give me more JOY. (I’ve been pretty cynical and bitter and frustrated about stuff since Josh’s mom died).

And tonight I felt really refreshed while worshiping, and I felt like I was starting to get back to the meaningful worship I had BEFORE all the stuff happened. So Joyful Praise…..wow….could not be more perfect for me as this new year starts. I know it’s going to be such a bright, colorful reminder to me every time I wear it!!!

Thank you so much for being obedient to the Father. Love you, Meghan!

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