The holidays have a way of making generosity visible.
Wrapped gifts appear beneath Christmas trees. Food drives fill collection boxes. Donations are made, meals are delivered and coats are gathered for children in need.
But giving does not always come in a box, and it does not always come with a dollar amount attached.
Sometimes, giving means showing up. Sometimes it means writing a check. Sometimes it means using the resources you already have to meet a need. And sometimes the gift is the opportunity to change yourself.
Across Abilene, generosity takes many forms.
For Charles and Kate Ferguson, it means giving their time to Meals on Wheels.
For the Evans family, it has become a holiday tradition of financial giving through the Community Foundation of Abilene.
Fran Beale has turned the resources of her dry-cleaning business into Jackets for Joy.
And at FaithWorks of Abilene, Executive Director Joyce Dalzell sees another kind of gift: the gift of self-improvement and a chance to build a different future.
GIVING OF TIME
Charles and Kate began volunteering with Meals on Wheels in 2019 as a way to do something meaningful together. Since then, they have continued to deliver each Friday along the same route.
What started as a shared activity has become a collection of relationships.
Kate said volunteering has shown them just how varied people’s needs can be. Some clients are elderly and do not have family living nearby. For others, the regular visit from a volunteer is an important source of companionship and consistency.
“People have such a variety of needs,” Kate said.
The food is essential. Meals on Wheels helps ensure that vulnerable people receive a balanced meal, and during the holidays, clients receive an additional special meal featuring turkey and dressing.
But the Fergusons have learned that what they bring to a client’s door cannot always be measured in portions.
They have gotten to know the people on their route — their children and grandchildren, their pets and the stories of their lives. They have celebrated happy moments and grieved with clients after the loss of pets and loved ones.
Kate said the people they serve have been a blessing to her and Charles, too.
For a volunteer, a visit may feel small – a few minutes at a door, a meal handed over and a conversation before moving on. But for the person receiving it, that simple act can have a much larger impact.
“It may feel small,” Kate said, “but a simple act has a huge impact.”
Meals on Wheels also partners with community groups to create festive, handmade Christmas cards for clients. Along with the holiday meal and a familiar face at the door, the cards can help make the season feel special.
Kate said Meals on Wheels can provide a sense of consistency when everything else may feel routine and the days may seem much the same.
The Fergusons have also made volunteering a family affair.
Kate remembers her son Henry talking with a veteran and hearing stories about the man’s time in the military. Some of the people they meet, she said, have amazing stories about their younger years.
Charles said those experiences can help younger people appreciate what they have.
The holidays are also a time when Meals on Wheels often needs additional drivers, making it an easy and meaningful way for families to give back when the need may be greatest.
For the Fergusons, generosity is measured in time, conversation and consistency.
GIVING FINANCIALLY
For the Evans family, it has become a tradition.
Shellie Evans and her family have participated for 10 years in a Christmas giving initiative through the Community Foundation of Abilene. Local nonprofits share specific needs with the foundation, and donors choose projects they want to support.
What makes the initiative meaningful to the Evans family is how tangible the gifts can be. One year, the family helped support a project at Martinez Elementary School in which every child received a board game. The games were wrapped like Christmas presents, much to the delight of the children.
Another year, they donated to Day Nursery of Abilene, which needed tricycles.
“It is different and personal,” Shellie said. “It is our opportunity as a family to participate.”
Her daughter, Andrea Leggett, said the tradition also gives family members who no longer live in Abilene a way to participate in their community from afar. Deciding where to give becomes a family conversation.
“Holidays are about tradition, and this is an important one to us,” Andrea said, adding that they tend to focus on children, mothers and education.
Shellie’s interest in helping children grew partly from her work as a counselor at Ortiz Elementary, where she worked with underserved children. Andrea remembers being in high school when they helped families at Ortiz who could not afford Christmas for their children.
Shellie wanted her children to understand the importance of helping people in need, especially during the holidays.
Today, the family uses a donor-advised fund that allows them to give twice a year and select projects they are drawn to.
Their giving may be financial, but it is also about family — creating a tradition and teaching the next generation that generosity is something you practice.
GIVING OF RESOURCES
Sometimes, however, meeting a need means looking at
what you already have.
That is what Fran Beale did with Jackets for Joy.
Fran, who owns A-Town Cleaners with her son, Brad, had always wanted to give back in a way that was different from simply making a monetary donation. Around 2013, the marketing director for KRBC/KTAB approached her with an idea for a coat drive.
The idea made use of resources already available through their dry-cleaning business.
Plastic bins were placed outside A-Town Cleaners’ locations for people to donate jackets. KRBC/KTAB collects the donations and organizes them by size, while Fran and her employees sort through and clean them.
When a family calls looking for a jacket for a child, the right size can be found and provided.
The coats have gone to organizations including Day Nursery of Abilene, New Horizons and Ben Richey Boys Ranch. Fran has also received calls from Hendrick Home for Children about families who cannot afford jackets.
The program has grown far beyond what Fran imagined. In its early years, the effort collected around 300 jackets. Last year, it collected more than 1,000.
She recalls one woman calling the news station looking for a specific size. Fran purchased the jacket herself and delivered it and said seeing the woman’s joy was “a gift in itself.” The following year, the woman called again looking for a jacket, which was happily provided.
For Fran, those moments show that the value of a gift is not necessarily determined by its price.
“I don’t want anyone to be cold,” she said. “I feel like the Lord is allowing us to use the resources that we have.”
She has seen children’s faces light up when they receive a coat and remembers a woman crying because she knew she would not be cold.
The jackets meet a practical need, but Fran believes they also provide dignity. It does not matter whether someone is homeless or facing another difficult circumstance, she said. Everyone deserves to feel pride in themselves and to feel worthy.
“We’re all people,” she said, adding that before the jackets leave A-Town Cleaners for the news station, she and a driver pray over them.
Fran believes gifts come in all shapes and sizes. A monetary gift matters. So does a conversation with someone who is lonely. So does visiting someone in a care home, going caroling, taking children to visit elderly people and listening to their stories, or making a care package or sending a note.
If someone has time, she said, give time.
If someone has another resource, find a way to use it.
GIVING BY INVESTING IN ONESELF
There is another kind of giving that may be harder to see at first: giving someone the opportunity to invest in themself.
That is central to FaithWorks of Abilene, a career development training program that helps people pursue gainful, long-term employment. FaithWorks began in 2003 and holds 13- week courses throughout the year. The latest course will finish on December 19.
For executive director Joyce Dalzell, the timing makes the holiday season especially meaningful.
“What does a family have this Christmas that it didn’t have the Christmas before?” she said.
For someone completing the FaithWorks program, the answer might be self-confidence. It might be a renewed sense of self. It might be the skills and confidence needed to get back on their feet.
And that gift affects the entire family.
FaithWorks focuses on the whole person — mentally, spiritually and physically. Participants learn to care for themselves in healthy and constructive ways, and even meals are part of that experience through what Joyce describes as “beautiful homemade lunches.”
The spiritual component is woven into the program as well. Each Thursday, participants work through the entire book of Matthew, concluding with a modified Passover meal.
Joyce says the program also gives participants a way to give to others.
Through a work program, they can earn financial credits by helping someone else. Rather than simply receiving money to meet a need, clients can earn credits by helping their neighbors in a variety of ways, whether that is serving a meal at church, arriving early to set up chairs at a recovery meeting or mowing an elderly neighbor’s yard.
In that model, receiving help and giving back become connected.
Joyce echoes overriding sentiment that Abilene is a generous community, and these examples help explain why.
Generosity does not have one definition.
For the Fergusons, it is time and companionship.
For the Evans family, it is financial support that has become a family tradition.
For Fran, it is using an existing business and community partnership to make sure a child does not go without a warm coat.
For FaithWorks, it is helping people develop confidence, skills and sense of worth to change what comes next — and then encouraging them to give back themselves.
The gifts are different, but each begins with the same question: What can I do?
During the holidays, the answer can be surprisingly simple.
Give a meal. Give a coat. Give a donation. Give a few hours. Give a conversation. Give a child a Christmas present. Give someone a chance.
Or give yourself the opportunity to become the person you hoped you could be.
Joyce said of the sayings associated with FaithWorks comes from George Eliot: “It is never too late to become what you might have been.”
The holiday season may be a time for giving, but these stories suggest that generosity is not really about what is placed under a tree.
It is about recognizing what you have — money, time, skills, resources, experience or encouragement — and deciding to share it.
Sometimes the smallest gesture becomes the thing someone remembers.
Sometimes the gift changes a family.
And sometimes, the person who thought they were giving turns out to be the one who received something, too.
By Molly Hill
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