Christmas Time at CFLM!

The Christmas season is always full of incredible generosity, and that holds true for the CFLM Family this year! We've been able to serve families well this season because of the support from so many individuals and churches. It's been a joy to watch others becoming aware of ways they can give back to others in this season and to then help equip them to truly meet needs in our community. We are excited to share with you some beautiful stories of how churches and community members have been able to support foster families and caseworkers together this Christmas season!

Supporting Caseworkers

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is delivering gifts to local foster care and adoption caseworkers in Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties. The jobs that these individuals have are often thankless and filled with many challenges. As a ministry, we want to show each person how valuable the work they do is and to encourage them to continue caring for vulnerable children and families in our community. It has been amazing to see local churches step in to this opportunity to encourage and support our local caseworkers and agencies who give so much of themselves daily to the incredible work they are a part of.

This year we partnered with Athens Church through their Be Rich Campaign to write nearly 200 encouraging Christmas cards and package 100 gifts of popcorn and homemade cookies to give to our local caseworkers!! Watkinsville First Baptist Church supplied over 600 cookies for these gifts! See below for some of the pictures from this volunteer event and our delivery of these gifts.

Supporting Foster Families

We were excited to host the Annual DFCS Christmas Party for Athens-Clarke and Oconee county foster families for the second year in a row! We were able to see families come together, enjoy a night of games and celebrations, and leave feeling loved and cared for. This year's party was full of so much fun, celebration, and generosity as we had many different churches and community organizations come together to make the party a success!

Briarwood Baptist Church graciously hosted the party for us and helped create beautiful decorations for our families to enjoy!

Classic City Church led the cookie decorating station, and all of the families had a blast creating beautiful Christmas cookies together!

Students from Westminister Christian Academy joined the party and helped families create amazing snowflake crafts and led our Bingo station throughout the night!

Life Church of Athens gathered supplies so that we could have a Face Painting Booth and a Christmas Tree craft. It was so much fun seeing lots of Rudolph faces throughout the party!

Relentless Grace led our Game Room with some very festive and fun stations! We had snowball bowling, fishing for candy canes, and Christmas memory matching.

Athens Church volunteers led our Hot Chocolate station throughout the night - making sure everyone had a warm cup of cocoa with yummy toppings! In total, we had 25 volunteers from Athens Church who helped families enjoy all of the stations throughout the party!

Faith Presbyterian Church led our Photo Booth station - taking pictures of families and printing them so each family could take home a special memory from the party!

Our local Athens-Oconee CASA provided gifts for every child who attended the party. Seeing the excitement on these kid's faces as they went home with gifts was a wonderful way to end the night!

Other volunteers and Christ Community Church helped us provide personalized gifts with gift cards for every foster family who attended the party! Custom ornaments for each family were given to the parents with a gift card and letter of encouragement from our Athens Church Be Rich Service Project. There were also personalized elves for each child who is in foster care. These were such sweet and special gifts that we were able to send home with every family!

Thank You!

It has been a joy for us to see so many willing hearts join us in our efforts to support and encourage these families in this season full of generosity. Families have walked away gaining memories together with children who may be in their homes for a season or who may become a part of their forever family in the months and years to come. We couldn't ask for any better gift than this - to help these families experience love and joy together this Christmas. 

Thank you to everyone who played a role in creating these moments for families and individuals to feel valued and appreciated this season. We are grateful for you all, and we wish you a Merry Christmas!

If you or your church would like to find a way to serve families or caseworkers throughout the year, let us know! You can click here to contact us and in the message box write, "Supporting families and/or caseworkers".