We take our Christmas stores seriously around here.  But first let me share about how we got started.

When we first started helping at Christmas, which was our first year in the ministry, we only had one apartment community.  The first 3 years we only had 4 apartment communities, so what we did was write every kid's name on an ornament and hung it on a tree and people from our church took the name and purchased the presents.  We would then place all the present for a family in a black trash bag and deliver it to the parents with wrapping paper and tape so that they could give their child a present.  By doing this the parent not the church gave the present so their self-esteem was kept in tact and we got a great chance to share the love of Jesus with the parent.  You will notice that all of ministries like this is to the parent not the children.

Mission Raleigh has grown so we can no longer do our ministry like we use to, but I wish we could it was so effective, but now we operate Christmas Stores.  We collect toys from our Church, Toys for Tots, and other donations then we will go into a community and run a Christmas Store right there.  Only parents can come and they are allowed to pick on toy per child.  We have personal shoppers to help take them through the store and the whole time the personal shopper is saying how Jesus supplied the toys.

We also do a collection of $25.00 Gift Cards from and we give those out to the youth we minister too.

There is not better time than Christmas to SHOW the love of Jesus!