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 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!

Because Jesus is alive!