Gratitude for Your Compassion

Here are some notes of gratitude from some very gracious and grateful moms and kids who want to thank those of you who gave to the Thanksgiving Big Give:

“The Secret Angels has helped me and my family be able to enjoy the holidays. Thank you so much. I have been out of work for almost 6 months and this is truly a blessing and I know God is smiling down on everyone.”

“The Secret Angels has helped me by giving me a meal to feed four young children. These are my grandchildren and niece that I’m raising. Angels like you all help make a difference in giving of your time to help families like ours. God Bless and have a happy holiday season!”

“The Secret Angels have been an awesome blessing in my family’s life. Providing food, presents, and other things have helped and has been wonderful. We didn’t have the funds for meals and Christmas presents. Secret Angels has blessed us and given us hope and fantastic holidays.”

“The SAP helps me and my family a lot because times have gotten to be very hard for us. I lost my job and had to take a lesser paying one that barely pays my bills. If it wasn’t for people like you all, me and my family wouldn’t have Thanksgiving dinner this year. So we are very thankful for you all and God bless all of you!”

“I would like to thank all the families who helped to make this possible. My family and I didn’t know how we were going to do Thanksgiving this year. So we are very thankful for all who helped this year. And the staff was very great!

A Child: “Secret Angels helps my family by giving us food and lots of toys at Christmas. We get things my parents couldn’t buy for us because we have so many medicines to buy and bills to pay. Secret Angels are angels to us because they take care of us.”

Gratitude for Your Compassion

If you've been following the Hickmans' Thanksgiving Saga, you may scroll down and read it in a three part blog. The following letter is posted from the Levine Children's Hospital for those of you who gave generously this past week to our families affected by AIDS:

November 28, 2008

Dear Secret Angels and “Co-Angels,”

Each Thanksgiving, families sit down together in honor of a tradition that began long before HIV and AIDS were discovered. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons, whether by blood or spirit, reflect on the blessings they have received. They give thanks for the food that warms their bodies and the love that warms their hearts. This Thanksgiving, many families affected by HIV were nourished by wonderful meals and the knowledge that a group of Angels is dedicated to vanishing the shadow this illness casts on their days. I, too, gathered with family this Thanksgiving, and thought about how grateful I am to the Secret Angels for their never-ending kindness and commitment.

Each Thanksgiving, families sit down together in honor of a tradition that began long before HIV and AIDS were discovered. Some day, families will sit down together again, and HIV and AIDS will be nothing but a lesson, and a memory.

Until there’s a cure,
Amy Fadden, MSW, LCSW
Clinical Social Worker
Levine Children’s Specialty Center
On behalf of the families of the Pediatric HIV clinic
* * * * *

Tomorrow, I'll post the notes of appreciation directly from our families.

Stay tuned!

The Thanksgiving Big Give

This week, the Secret Angels Project will distribute Thanksgiving food boxes to our families who are affected by AIDS/HIV. We are being stretched beyond what we’ve ever been stretched as triple the families are requesting boxes this year. If you can give to the SAP, we will make sure that these families are blessed beyond measure. After the Thanksgiving Give, our Christmas campaign will begin. Our goal is to provide at least $50. $75 in gift cards to 163 infants, children, and teens affected by AIDS. Our goal is to raise over $10,000.

in contributions between now and Dec. 13, 2008. Thank you for helping us meet this goal. Many

of the children we serve need clothing and coats. A toy under the tree is greatly appreciated.
http://www.secretangelsproject.com/

A Secret No Woman Should Keep

Native Americans believe the soul journeys south after death, thus the meaning behind the term “going south.” Outlaws using the phrase might mean that they plan to disappear into Texas or Mexico; it denotes the idea of journeying into a place where one might disappear. Perhaps going south represents a mixture of longing and succumbing, of giving up on this present life for a life less complicated; the death of an old life in exchange for the possibilities that lay ahead in an unknown landscape; a longing for anonymity.

But there is a shadow that is going south as we speak. It is a shadow that stigmatizes and wrecks this present life, leaving in its wake an uncertain landscape. It is the shadow of AIDS stretching from Washington D.C. to the Mississippi Delta and into the Southeast.

The research triangle in North Carolina contains the highest number of Ph.D's per capita in the US and is the biggest research park in the world. One would think that with all of that super brain power here in the Carolinas, we would enjoy a built-in immunity from this creeping death. Instead, we’re facing the news that we have the highest rising demographic to hit this nation since the plagues. North Carolina alone is believed to have over 35,000 people living with AIDS.

The Secret Angels Project was established by a group of local Christian moms who organized a gift giving campaign every Christmas for local children and teens affected by AIDS/HIV. We believed that because of the optimism of drug treatments that in a few short years AIDS would be a myth in America. We still remember when we talked about the near future, how we dreamed of when the Project could leave the Carolinas and head for Africa. Instead, our gift giving drive had to take on new complex facets. With over one million people now diagnosed with AIDS in America and over half a million having died from it, the Secret Angels Project has become a charitable organization, still very driven by moms, that offers crisis and domestic support to southern women, children, and teens affected by AIDS. There’s one thing that we want women to know—AIDS should not be a woman’s best kept secret.

If you would like to sponsor a child, teen, or mom for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you can visit our website, check out the resources page, and bless an angel for the holidays.
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“’For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,’ declares the LORD, ‘Because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her.’”
Jer. 30:17