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. Then 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
potholders to sell for $1. We made $20 on
potholders. That month was 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 about 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 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 knives that we passed around
to whomever 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
just 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.