East Texas Church members combined efforts with the Texarkana and Ruston, Louisiana, congregations in a spring donation drive to benefit the Truman W. Smith Children’s Center in Gladewater, Texas.

The Truman Smith Center is a children’s hospital specializing in serving the long and short-term needs of the medically fragile youth. While some of the children are at the facility for rehab, others are long term, some even in comas. The center was in need of various items such as socks, t-shirts, videos, toys, hair accessories, books, Christian music CDs and other items. Toys, books and Christian music are used in the daily rehabilitation programs. Even a child in a coma has books read to them and other sources of stimulation such as music and movies played.

The center accepts and will sanitize gently used items, so this allowed all ages to participate in the drive. While adults watched for garage sales and clearance items, children donated some of their own toys and other accessories. Even some neighbors of members joined in on the drive. One member located a resale shop donation so large it had to be delivered ahead of the scheduled ending date.

Activity director Cassandra Hall was surprised and touched at the quantity and variety of the donations. She pointed out specific toys that would benefit certain children. She commented that some of the items such as puppets will be used by the teachers in their classrooms. She was also grateful for the many hair accessories, as they are greatly needed.

According to Ms. Hall the facility receives donations at other times of the year but early summer is usually when items run low or wear out. She expressed great appreciation to the Church for filling this need.

Many Church members enjoyed collecting donations and offered to do it again when needed. “We all appreciate the ability to help,” said Glenda Neff of the Texarkana church, “It was fun.”