The Rich Family in Church

This story really touched me. Talk about true sacrificial giving!

THE RICH FAMILY IN CHURCH

By Eddie Ogan

I'll never forget Easter 1946.

I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16.

We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was

to do without many things.

My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids

to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home.

A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a

special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family.

He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do.

We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month.

This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the

offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned

out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save

money on that month's electric bill.

Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and

both of us babysat for everyone we could.

For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot

holders to sell for $1.

We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our

lives.

Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At

night we'd sit in the dark and talk

about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the

church would give them.

We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount

of money we had to give, the

offering would surely be 20 times that much.

After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for

the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got

the manager to give us

three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change.

We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had

so much money before.

That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care

that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the

sacrificial offering.

We could hardly wait to get to church!

On Sunday morning, rain was pouring.

We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our

home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got.

Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard

came apart, and her feet got wet.

But we sat in church proudly.

I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their

old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the

second row from the front.

Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.

As we walked home after church, we sang all the way.

At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and

we had boiled

Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!

Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to

the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an

envelope in her hand.

We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the

envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20

bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and

stared at the floor.

We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white

trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone

who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of

brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly.

We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the

spoon or the fork that night.

We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I

knew we didn't have a lot of things other people had, but I'd never

thought we were poor.

That Easter day I found out we were.

The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we

must be poor.

I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes

and felt so ashamed

--I didn't even want to go back to church.

Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!

I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of

my class of over 100 students.

I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor.

I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth

grade. That was all the law required at that time.

We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to

bed.

All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one

talked much.

Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the

money.

What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never

known we were poor.

We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to.

Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way.

Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse.

At church we had a missionary speaker.

He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun

dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would

put a roof on a church.

The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor

people?"

We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.

Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed

it to Darlene. Darlene gave

it to me, and it I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a

little over $100.

The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large

offering from our small church.

He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."

Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."

We were the rich family in the church!

Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been

poor again.

I've always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus