Corpus Christi UM youth group
transforms home for Christmas

By Rachel L. Toalson
Staff Writer
Catherine Albert of Corpus Christi hesitated just long enough to make a difference.
The youth director at St. John’s UMC had called to notify a needy family that it had been chosen for the youth group’s annual Extreme Christmas Makeover—a chance for a night on the town while youths and adults transform the family home with Christmas decorations and stock the pantry with food.
A school counselor had recommended the family—a grandmother in the Flour Bluff neighborhood who was rearing four grandchildren.
Days passed without a call back. When Albert would normally have moved on to the next suggested family on her list, she called again. This time the grandmother answered, her voice shaky with tears.
She told Albert she was caring for an 8-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy and 12-year-old twin girls. One of the twins was diagnosed with cancer about a year ago. While undergoing chemotherapy, the girl caught a virus and almost died.
That’s why, the grandmother explained, she had not returned Albert’s call.
“I knew in my heart that God wanted them to be the family,” Albert said.
Albert said she asked the grandmother if she could visit her home to determine what the St. John’s youth group could do for the family. The grandmother began sobbing again, saying their home was uninhabitable. Albert told her she still needed to see it.
“I went over there, and she must have seen the look on my face because she collapsed in her recliner and said, ‘This is too hard,’” Albert said. “I said, ‘This is too hard, and all of me wants to say there’s no way, but God says, ‘Don’t ever say to me no way because I will make a way.’ And he made a way.”
The makeover took more than one visit, Albert said.

The first time, Albert took 30 people to clean out the house. They filled a 50-foot dumpster with trash that had piled up inside.
“People, to me, dig holes in their lives,” Albert said. “spiritually, mentally, physically. They get into this hole. She had a series of things happen in about five years, and she was slowly digging deeper into this hole.
“The reason we’re here is to help other people get out of the hole, to help empty the garbage, whether it’s spiritually or mentally or physically.”
The grandmother’s husband had died. Her children left their kids with her. At one point, Albert said, eight children had lived in the home. The grandmother’s only income was a monthly Social Security check.
St. John’s youths and adults visited other times to help clean and ready the home for the extreme Christmas surprise, Albert said.
More than three dozen youths gathered inside the home Dec. 20 while the family was taken out on the town. The group spent the day painting and repairing damaged dry wall and fixing some of the home’s leaks.
Then the youths hung stocking and filled them, decorated a Christmas tree and strung lights on the outside of the house. The young people set a Christmas dinner table, changed the bedding with Christmas sheets and laid out Christmas pajamas for the kids.
Youths filled the kitchen with treats. The young people wrapped and hid the children’s presents so the grandmother could surprise them Christmas morning.
The family also received some new furniture, including a new bedroom set donated to St. John’s. Church members donated money for other items, Albert said.
The grandmother was given a gift certificate for a haircut, hair coloring, pedicure, manicure and massage.
The 2007 project was very different from 2006’s, Albert said. In 2006, the first year Albert did the Extreme Christmas Makeover, two working parents with four children were chosen—but the team visited the home only once.

“I think it had to be the way it was (in 2007), though,” Albert said. “It was extremely overwhelming. But so many things have happened as a result. (The grandmother) told us she had never seen love like our church showed to her family. We did ministry to her and her kids. And now so many people in the church are involved with them in different ways.
“That night is the beginning. It is not the end.”
St. John’s members keep in touch with the Extreme Christmas Make-over families. Albert said the family from 2006 joined a Baptist church a few blocks away from its home. The husband and wife are attending parenting classes and are applying to Habitat for Humanity for a new home.
“This (Extreme Christmas Make-over) is an ongoing ministry,” Albert said. “We don’t just go in and decorate. This is an opportunity to open the door for transformation in their life in a real way. You can’t go in and try to overhaul people’s lives without showing them how much you love them.
“But you don’t get to the place where you can fill a 50-foot dumpster because your life is fine. I think God is going to reveal new opportunities to minister to that family. We are willing to commit to them in a long-term way. Those kids have a real opportunity to have some of that generational hold broken, and they’re willing.”
Albert said she began doing Extreme Christmas Makeover because God spoke to her. She hopes that when people see the story, they begin to think about what they can be doing for the needy families in their community.