The Rich Family in Our Church

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 we 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 that 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 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!

by Eddie Ogan

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