How a Single Facebook Post Transformed Christmas for a Family in Need

On this episode of Our American Stories, Ashley Freeman came home from overseas determined to help people in her own town. When she asked her neighbors for Christmas donations for a family in crisis, the response was overwhelming. Gifts, decorations, and support came from across the state and beyond. One act of generosity led to another, and what started with one woman turned into a community-wide effort that reached far more people than expected.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
And we returned to our American stories and all show along.
We're celebrating Christmas between shopping, making wishless and putting gifts
under trees. It's easy to get distracted with all the
business and forget why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.
Up next is Ashley Freeman. Ashley lives in Oxford, Mississippi,

(00:33):
about an hour south of Memphis, Tennessee. She's here to
share with us the importance of putting our wants aside
and serving others during the Christmas season.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
This past summer, I went to Africa and to Belize
on a mission trip. We went out in the villages
and did service work for people in need. We did
a lot of physical labor around the base camp and
for churches out in remote villages. We went out every

(01:07):
day and worked with moms that it had babies, elderly people.
And one day we went out and just cleaned someone's house.
It took us all of thirty minutes, you know, but
they were just so appreciative to see the appreciation that

(01:28):
these people have. How one little act of service or
kindness and change someone's life. Oh man, It'll just change
your heart. It's almost like that's the way the world
should be over there. So I came back to the
States thinking, Okay, I'm just going to try to implement

(01:49):
that in my everyday life. I know it feels so
good to go over and do mission work in Africa
or beliefs, but how can we bring that work here
because there is a need. And so that just got
my wheels turning. I started thinking, Okay, I'm nobody, really,

(02:11):
you know, I'm just one little person on this earth.
But I'm going to try to use what I learned
over there to make a difference here. And so I
was contacted about a lady in need that had escaped
an abusive marriage. They left with nothing, not a vehicle,

(02:33):
not closed, nothing. We just wanted to make her Christmas
a little brighter. It was actually my one of my
friend's ideas. But when she mentioned it to me, I
was like, this is done and done. And so I'm
not scared to put anything on Facebook, especially when it

(02:54):
comes to helping others, And so I threw it up
on Facebook. I think my posts went a little something
like Oxford Friends, Help, I have a friend in need
of anything Christmas. You know, anything that you have that
you may not be using there's a person in need
and we want to help them. Within a few minutes,

(03:17):
goodness gracious, my friend said, do you think you should
take it off? Because like the donations are just coming
in left to right. I had people in other states
been mowing me donations. It was a lady who I
barely know. We met one time at the beach years ago.

(03:37):
I've only known her through Facebook except for meeting her
over a decade ago. And she reached out and said,
I want to help, and we had more than we
could have ever imagined. We went over be bopped up
in her house with some lunch and surprised her and
did a tree, decorated it, decorated her house and sprinkled

(04:02):
Christmas all over her house. It was, you know, one
of those moments that you'll never forget, just tears and
tears and tears of joy. And it changed her life
and it changed ours two. It just came together so beautifully,
you know, and this community stepped up like they always do.

(04:22):
So it didn't start with me, but I definitely got
behind it. And because of that, my eyes have really
been opened. There are families and children that desperately need
just love to know that they're not alone, that people
do care, that this community is willing to step up

(04:43):
in times of need. I have so many donations that
came in that I just thought, I'm going to post
something asking this community if they know of anyone in need,
shut ins or elderly people, single moms or single dads,
anybody that could use a pick me up. And I

(05:05):
got a handful of responses. People messaged me we know
of another family in need, the two children they're twins,
and their special needs, and so with the extra donations,
we are going to surprise the kids with Christmas. So
it's like a domino effect, you know, like once you

(05:26):
open the door for change and happiness, good things just
continue to happen. For me, I'm a single mom, so
around the holidays it gets a little quiet and lonely.
And so I had heard about this elderly man who's ninety.
He lives by himself, his wife recently passed, and I

(05:49):
just couldn't even imagine him sitting in his house alone quiet,
and so I thought, well, I'm just going to take
this man some cookies and say Mary Christmas, and just
do for him the way others have done for me.
In the past. I had Lucy in two thousand and nine.

(06:12):
She's now twelve, and so every year since Lucy's been little,
I've tried to take the focus off of the gift
giving and just how can we provide a smile to someone.
One year, she and a friend made little cards and

(06:32):
just wrote a Bible verse where Jesus loves you, and
they stuck them in envelopes and just colored and made
them really cute. And I was actually getting my nails done,
and so they walked around the parking lot putting the
envelopes on people's cars, and then they snunk back into
the nail shop to watch people's reaction when they came

(06:54):
out to the cars. And I'll never forget this one man,
hell man, he looked really grumpy, and he and his
wife got in the truck and he realized there was
something on his windshield. So he rolled his eyes and
he got out and got the envelope out and he
opened it and his face lit up and he punched

(07:14):
his wife with his elbow. You know, you could just
see everything going down. And they both just sat in
the truck with the biggest smiles on their face, giggling,
and I was like that is what it's all about.
That's the kind of experience that I want her to have.
So every year we've tried to do something because I
want her to have a heart for other people. And

(07:36):
so hopefully these little things, these little acts of kindness
that we do together will help her, and hopefully when
she has children, she'll do the same. It's a big
domino effect, you know. Just from Lucy and I doing
little things, maybe someone else will do for others. You know,
maybe that man decided to go out and do something

(07:59):
for someone else because he looked really grumpy, but gosh,
I'll never forget the joy that was in his face
after he hid been that envelope, and just to see
Lucy and her friend. They loved watching people's responses. That
is what it's all about. Just taking the focus off

(08:21):
of us and gifts, you know, It's about what we
can do for others. And there's always a need for
giving donations, service work. There's so many other opportunities that
have been presented to me, so I've got a little
something up my sleeve for some other people that are

(08:43):
in need. This just continues to grow, and a lot
of times you just get wrapped up in the hustle
and bustle of Christmas time, and so I wanted to
not focus on myself, just because I knew from my
experience in Africa how it could affect someone else's life

(09:05):
in the most amazing way. I'm going to go on,
hopefully lots of other mission trips, but I know now
that it's not a necessity to go do good deeds
in another country. Those deeds can be found here. This
community blows me away by their generosity. They're willing to

(09:30):
do amazing things and to go above and beyond for somebody.
And if you think you can't make a difference, you're wrong.
One little old me can make such a difference and
be a blessing to anyone or help anyone. And that's
what Christmas is about.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
And a great job on the production by Madison, and
a special thanks to Ashley Freeman for telling her story
and sharing it with us. By the way, so many
Americans do mission wark all over the world. Our capacity,
our generosity is unrivaled. Four hundred and fifty billion a
year we give away and nine billion hours. No other

(10:10):
country or series of countries matches that. And it's what
makes us great, really it's our love, our capacity to love,
our generosity, and our capacity to serve. And it's not
a widely enough reported story about our great people. And
that's why we tell them here in our American Stories.
If you think you can't make a difference, you're wrong,

(10:31):
said Ashley. The story of Ashley Freeman, the story of
so many generous Americans and towns rallying for the people
around them who need love and who need to know
weak care. This is our American Stories.