It is time once again for the Adopt a Christmas Angel program in Port O’Connor, to provide Christmas gifts for our less fortunate children. This is how the program works: From now until December 10, you can pick up paperwork at POC Hardware. This consists of a numbered envelope containing the “vital statistics” for your chosen child – age, gender, grade, clothing sizes, shoe size, and coat size. Shoe and coat sizes will only be available if your child needs these items. You do not need to purchase any toys. The Toy Run, another annual Christmas program, provides these.

The Adopt A Christmas Angel committee recommends a spending limit of $100 per child. If you would like to participate but feel that you cannot afford this amount by yourself, enlist a friend or two to split the cost, and share the fun of shopping and wrapping, along with the glow of knowing you have helped a child have a nice Christmas. After you have shopped for your Angel, wrap the gifts, place them in a bag, and put your Angel’s number on the bag (not on the gifts). Please take your gifts to POC Hardware Store by December 19. The store will keep the gifts until time for their delivery/pick-up. The employees at the hardware store are most gracious in helping to complete this project each year, and they have an alarm system which keeps everything safe.

If you want to participate but are unable to do the shopping, you may let Wanda or Judith at the POC Hardware know. Santa’s elves will be glad to help. Help these children to have a Merry Christmas and it’s very likely that your Christmas will be even merrier!

If You Need To Put A Child On This Year’s Angel List:

Angels will be accepted until November 30. Do not wait until the last minute! This is a large program and it takes numerous people to get it up and going. You should contact Wanda Redding at the POC Hardware (983-2708) during the store’s business hours. Strict confidentiality will be maintained. Even the kind souls who adopt these angels do not know the identity of the child. The parent or guardian only may put a child on the list and make arrangements. The child must live in Port O’Connor and be between the ages of one year and sixth grade. School-aged children must attend Port O’Connor School. Do not put relatives’ children on the list unless they live with you.

You will need to furnish the child’s age, grade and clothing sizes. You may also include any special interest that your child may have. Please use this program if you need, but do not abuse it. If you have used the program in the past, and if you can, maybe this year you can adopt an angel.

Let us be perfectly honest – not every family gathering is an exercise in kindness, gentleness, and self-control.

Oh, and joy – let us not forget joy, particularly the “joy” we feel when a kid grabs the remote after the meal and flips on mindless cartoons rather than the football game of the century that we really wanted to see.

Consequently, a typical Thanksgiving or Christmas gathering may leave us more weary and emotionally drained than refreshed and grateful we had believed the trip would be.

At my university class titled “Abnormal Psychology” we learned that no one had any chance of being normal – we all have just too many factors that will drive us off course! Our professor asked, “Why do we teach functional as the norm when most every family is dysfunctional?”

So, when we gather this holiday season, we must realize that virtually every family is experiencing some level of discomfort. We can easily imagine the neighbors’ lives are like a Hallmark commercial, when, in reality, most people can relate more to a flawed, stressed-out sitcom family.

As an “ole” pastor, I have the strange privilege of peering behind the illusion of perfection to where the deep secrets of family dysfunction and the pain associated with its presence lurks. It is easy to see that dysfunction is tenacious, but survivable. But the sad truth is, even the best-laid plans of even pastors’ homes sometimes go awry. We end up irritable, passive-aggressive, and fighting over the remote. So how do we arrive on the island of contentment before embarking on the voyage of family chaos? To survive the holiday gatherings, allow me to suggest two vital components.

The first, I call spiritual preparation. There is an Old Testament King of Israel, King Rehoboam, who made the mistake of failing to prepare his heart before an important encounter. The Bible says, “He did evil because he had not set his heart on seeking the Lord.” Are we guilty of bringing our gunk to the family dinner and expecting that it will not show itself?

Everyone who faces a challenge successfully did so because they were prepared. A football team will never win without difficult practices. A musician will never get the applause without hours of solitary practice. A family will never find harmony until they are at peace within themselves. A heart that is overflowing with the love, joy, peace, and patience that we want will only come from inside a heart that is prepared to share love, joy, peace and patience!

The second, I call emotional preparation. One can not hear the cries of hurting people very long before we must say, “You can not allow others to dictate how you feel.” Individually we have the personal responsibility of caring for and directing our own heart; we can not rely on others to do this for us. Walking around with our hearts in our hands, offering it to others to validate or recognize, is often just a desperate ploy for attention. That attention will not make one feel complete, but fragmented!

We must prepare our hearts for the gathering. We must take time to play the soccer match that keeps us sane. Take time to relax before the trip. Treat yourself to something out of the ordinary special. Do what is necessary to care for your heart so that it is not so easily bruised when someone snatches the remote from your turkey-greased fingers.

A change in you will change the environment you find yourself in. It will not make other family members any more functional, but it will help you handle the stress with true love!

Traditions are fun, and we have one I really enjoy. We always give a Christmas Jar. I have written about The Christmas Jar a few times and shared the special stories of families and individuals in POC who have received a jar on Christmas morning. If you are unfamiliar with the story and tradition, grab a copy of the book and read it. Bestselling author Jason Wright wrote the fictional account of the chain reaction created in a small town when a neighbor saved spare change and leftover pocket money all year long in a glass jar. The jar was then secretly given to a neighbor in need of a blessing. The jar’s recipient, appropriately named Hope, is a reporter who dives in to discover that more intriguing than the money in the jar was the message and meaning behind it. The book was a smash hit that created a movement. Now, Christmas jars are lovingly started in the new year by many to be joyfully given at Christmas time, and sequels to the book tell of the impact they have made. If you have never given a jar to someone, I challenge you to try it. It only takes a little money and a little time to make a big difference. If you didn’t start earlier, there is still time. Clean out that change slot in your car, behind the sofa cushions, the bottom of your purse, the dish on the dresser where your husband dumps his pockets and put it in all together. Add it to a jar with a ribbon and card, add a loaf of nut bread if you like and secretly share your jar with someone who needs a little something special this year. Did they have a rough time, lose a loved one or deal with illness? Maybe hope seems lost for them as they face seemingly hopeless situations. Leave them a little magic Christmas hope by leaving them a Christmas Jar. They will feel loved and you will be blessed and rewarded. It is a great lesson for kids and teenagers love the secret giving. Families can do it together. Try it and you might find you want to make it a tradition in your family.

Many of us will enjoy a turkey dinner over the Thanksgiving week and I thought it would be interesting to do a little research on this unique bird. Although there were plenty of turkeys in the area of the first Thanksgiving feast, no one really knows if turkey was on that particular menu. Old journals mention “wild fowl” but that could just as easily have been ducks and geese as they were plentiful as well. Thanksgiving wasn’t established as a national holiday until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared it such after the discovery of William Bradford’s journals in 1856 which had been lost for nearly a century. Since he mentions the colonists hunting turkeys in his journals and the Wild Turkey is found throughout the U.S., it seems logical that they became the Thanksgiving meal of choice for many Americans. Most of us learned in grammar school that Benjamin Franklin nominated the Wild Turkey as the national bird but the majestic Bald Eagle won that contest.

Wild Turkeys range from southern Canada south to Mexico and occur in 49 U.S. states. It is too cold in Alaska for them to survive and they were introduced in Hawaii over 100 years ago. They live in all different sorts of forests and in the southwest they are often found in open grassy savannah with small oaks. They eat acorns, other nuts and seeds and survive on buds, ferns, and mosses during the winter. Sometimes they will eat insects and snails to supplement their diet. Although they prefer to run, they can fly too and often roost in trees. You’ve never had such a fright as a big old turkey flying out of a tree to the ground if you startle one while walking through a forest. And they don’t usually come in ones either as they tend to hang around in flocks.

Wild Turkeys nest on the ground in dead leaves around tree bases, under brush piles or thick shrubbery or sometimes in open hayfields. The female uses only plant materials that are already found at the nest site when she scrapes out a shallow depression in the soil. The female lays 4 to 17 eggs and incubates them for 25 to 31 days. The male does not help with incubation and also provides no chick care. The young chicks follow the female until they learn to feed on their own.

Although there were plenty of turkeys when the first British settlers arrived and there are plenty of them now, they suffered severe declines during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to hunting and habitat loss. Captive breeding programs were unsuccessful in restoring turkey populations but successful transplants of wild-caught birds beginning in the 1940’s are what brought turkey populations back.

Although wild and domestic turkeys are the same species, they are very different from each other. Years of selective breeding have resulted in domestic turkeys that are heavier and broader breasted with shorter legs than their wild counterpart. As a result, domestic turkeys can’t fly and they can’t run nearly as fast as wild ones can. Wild turkeys have almost all dark meat which is intensely flavored depending on what they have been feeding on in contrast to domestic turkeys which have almost all white meat.

Except for the Lower Rio Grande Valley, coastal Texas doesn’t have any Wild Turkeys but there are plenty of domestic ones around so if you hear a turkey gobbling, you can be pretty sure it’s in a pen somewhere nearby. While you’re eating your turkey dinner, think about the wild cousins of your domestic turkey peacefully walking through forests searching for their own dinner.

As our Coastal Winter Season approaches, some good warm comfort food cooking starts to sound good!

Winter brings more use of the R.V. cook stove. Most R.V’s are equipped with an LP  appliance that has 2 or 3 burners and an oven.  It is smaller than a household stove, (keep that in mind while stocking your cookware) and does cook as hot as a gas appliance in your home. Baking and cooking may take a few minutes longer.  Ovens may not heat as evenly. To assist in baking, a baking stone is a handy item to own.  Make sure it is small enough to allow heat to flow around the rack.  Once it is hot it helps maintain even heat while baking. There are many resources for tasty recipes that RV’ers have developed.  Easy way to find them:  Google R.V. recipes!!

How do you light the oven?  Always with a long BBQ lighter! It is tempting to leave the pilot light on, because it is necessary to get down to floor level to see where to light the pilot!  Please don’t leave the pilot lit!  It uses up the oxygen in your R.V.! not to mention using up LP. NEVER NEVER use oven or burners to heat the R.V.!!! Best practice cautions when preparing to use your oven:  Turn on your stove vent fan.  Check your BBQ lighter for function. Find position to see the pilot, and be able to reach it with your lighter.  Follow instructions on your stove to engage the Pilot Light.  Hold ignited lighter to pilot until flame comes on. Remove your lighter, watch the pilot to make sure it holds the flame.  Set your desired temperature, burner should ignite.

When cooking on top burners, cover pans as much as possible.  This helps items to heat faster, hold even temperature and keeps the extra moisture out of your R.V. Always cook with the stove vent fan on.  Remember to look at your vent cover to make sure it opens when you engage the fan.  Some vents have tabs on the outside/interior cover that keeps it shut during transport or rain.  Some have a tab or lever inside under the edge of the vent hood inside to secure the vent. Keep your vent filters clean to ensure long term operation.  Some filters slide out to the side, others have small spring clips that release when pulled down.
If you plan to use an electric appliance to cook, try to do so when electric power usage by the A/C and other parts of the R.V. is at minimum. Do not plug your electric appliance in the slide out outlets. Use them in GFCI outlets, in the kitchen area, that will trip if power draw is over loaded. Please do not use the “extra outlet extensions” that plug into your outlets!

Remember!!  When a breaker trips, it is doing it’s Job, which is protecting your R.V. circuits, appliances  and you from unnecessary expense and in worst case, a fire!

Safe Travels for those going away for the holiday, and for those coming for the Winter Season!!

We Wish All a HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Need Supplies? Have Questions? Need Service?
Call or Stop By:
T&A R.V.
1660 Lane Road, Seadrift Tx, 77983
361-524-8707
Tues thru Sat: 8am to 5pm
We will be CLOSED Thanksgiving!!
We appreciate ALL of our customer support!
Thom and Alice