Christmas Joy

December 26, 2018 by Spreading Joy

Joy Hope and Love

Joy, hope and love filled the room as everyone was coming in this year at our Christmas Joy Event! Thank you seems so small compared to these ginormous smiles you provided!

Thank you for the joy that filled hearts of the moms that was able to relax a little while having a nice meal and then getting a few extra gifts for her children on Christmas morning!

Thank you for the hope that you gave so freely with each encouraging tweet, like and share on Social Media and financial gift that provided for the needs of the event!

Thank you for the love that each and every person felt as they received gifts to take with them that day! Everyone that attended received something! We were even able to provide a small gift for the Mommies to take with them because you were so generous with the love you were sharing this Christmas Season! Thank you!

Thank you to those who adopted children and provided gifts for them!

Thank you to the Corporate Sponsors who helped with various needs, food and gifts! Thank you for your heart for others!

Olive Garden in Gastonia NC
New Grace Baptist Church
Patterson Pope Charlotte NC
Iron Mountain Charlotte NC
Clark Nexsen Charlotte NC
Great Clips Lake Wylie SC

Thank you for loving those that are often forgotten!

Thank you for loving those that cannot hug you or thank you personally! That’s true giving!

Thank you for giving so selflessly out of love!

Thank you to each one that came and helped! For picking up food and toys, for helping to set up and for helping to tear down – thank you! We could not do this without you, nor would we want to as you are the ones who make the magic happen each year!

Thank you!

I pray that as you waltz into 2019 that you see many many opportunities to make a difference and that you’ll have fun Spreading Joy Daily!

For More photos check out our Facebook post.

November 23, 2018 by Spreading Joy

Calling All Angels

Our Christmas JOY Event is 12/15/2018 this year and we need your help to Spread Christmas JOY and hope to families in need!

We are 1/4 of where we typically are this time of year and need all Christmas Angels to step up and help make a difference where you can.

With your help and generous heart of giving, Spreading Joy will hold a huge Christmas party, inviting families that need a little extra help for Christmas. When you give, we will be able to provide a nice lunch, gifts that will be taken home to be opened on Christmas morning, as well as some toys, prizes and each child will make several trips through our giant candy store!

These children are referred to as the “Forgotten Children” by local DSS Workers, and we want to invite as many as we can! So yes – we need every Christmas Angel to help out that we can find!

Why partner with Spreading Joy? 100% of your gift goes toward helping families in need. Click To Tweet Everyone volunteers for SJC and loves giving back! You never pay for a salary, vacation or other things that your heart wonders about.

As the founder of this Organization, I also make donations that help cover the costs of running things behind the scenes so that all of your donations can go back into Spreading Joy to those in need!

Here are several ways to partner with us:

Mail a gift or donation to Spreading JOY PO Box 1771 Denver NC 28037 no gift is too small
- $5 purchases prizes to give to kids that day
- $10 purchases a toy for the mom to take home for Christmas
- $100 purchases a toy for 10 children
- $1000 purchases 100 gifts
Make an online donation – YES! 100% minus the paypal fees that are taken out goes to help others
Adopt a child or two – Let us know how many children you’d like to adopt. Purchase 3 gifts for them. 1 about $15 range and 2 in the $7-$10 range. We’ll send you the ages and names so you can shop for them
Ask your place of employment and/or church or other groups to collect toys or $10 GIFT CARDS for Spreading Joy
Purchase $10 gift cards from McDonald’s or Walmart – these make fabulous gifts for the older children
Gather gently loved books and stuffed animals – we’d love to send the children home with these items that day. They love them. Ask your family, friends, co-workers etc. You’d be surprised how many you can collect
If you are in the Charlotte Metro area, you can meet me with any of the above!
Share THIS and ALL of our Facebook Postings on your Social Media outlets – There are Tweets and Facebook posts below that you can share! You never know who is looking for an organization like this one to support!

We are asking everyone we know! Yes…Everyone. It never hurts to ask and we know that there is no way to pull off such an amazing event without your help.

Please donate or reach out to us early with the number of children you’d like to adopt so that we can go ahead and make sure every child is supported!

We’d love to be able to invite 100 children or more and give them 3 to 4 gifts each this year and know that without your love, support and generosity, we will never accomplish such an event!

Want to see how your gifts are used? Here is a link to past Christmas Joy Events! Those smiles are priceless and why we work so hard raising funds to be part of their Christmas morning! http://www.spreading-joy.org/site/category/christmas-joy/

Will you Re-tweet this?

100% of Your Gift of any size will help those in need this Christmas! #ChristmasJOY needed this Christmas Season https://t.co/DHTr13OcvI pic.twitter.com/p6QjIc9duv
— Marie Wikle??? (@spreadingJOY) October 31, 2017

Will you share this on Facebook?

Thank you for caring for others this Christmas Season! Thank you for giving of yourself. Thank you for reminding these children that they are not forgotten! Thank you!

We are an IRS Approved Non-Profit and your donation is tax-deductible as allowed by the law.

January 11, 2018 by Spreading Joy

When Toys are not Just Toys

We believe that every act of love, regardless of the size, has a huge impact on everyone involved.

We love Spreading Joy to those around us and always strive to do more year after year. Christmas 2017 was a little different.

Donations were down and our list had to be scaled down but we did what we love doing and that is making a difference with what we have. You’ve been there, we all have.

Our Christmas Joy event isn’t just toys, food and fun and games. It’s love in action, it’s kindness shared, it’s hugs, laughter and unconditional love for those that walk through the door.

Because of your generosity, love, and prayers, we were able to invite 66 children to our event this past Christmas.

Your gifts of unconditional love shaped as dolls, basketballs, superhero t-shirts were received with great joy!

Because of your heart for others, hugs were exchanged freely and the children that came were able to have some gifts for Christmas Day as well as a couple of gifts to enjoy that day.

Thank you for sharing in our time of giving love, hope and happiness for these families!

Thank you for the stickers, Facebook and Twitter Shares and food that you gave!

Thank you for the drinks, toys and many many people you asked to help out!

Thank you for Spreading Christmas Joy with us!

We’d love it if you’d hop over to our Facebook page and check out all the photos. Thanks for caring and being part of their Christmas Memories!

Special Thank you to Olive Garden in Gastonia for the food for the day and Iron Mountain Charlotte Facility for collecting toys for us!

December 23, 2016 by Spreading Joy

What is Christmas Joy

What is Christmas JOY you ask?

Besides the obvious JOY of giving, loving and being together with family and friends (near and far) it’s an annual event that we here at Spreading Joy have every year.

We couldn’t do it without your help and the help of so many amazing people that are just oozing compassion and love!

With your help of spreading the word about our annual Christmas Joy Event, financial donations and volunteering, we are able to host a Christmas party for many families that need some help with gifts for their children.

We take the year and round up toys (thank you for your monthly donation!) and keep an eye out for amazing deals that will benefit the families we work with.

With your help we pull together food, drinks, desserts, snacks and some fun smaller toys for the kids to enjoy during the evening!

The candy store you help us to provide is the favorite of most everyone! This year we had 31 different candies for the children to drop in their bag. They were able to get several pieces of each one.

Keep in mind; it’s not about changing the world with your millions of dollars and endless resources. It’s about making a difference with the resources you have right here…right now. What will you do with what you have?

Thank you for helping us to change lives, we couldn’t accomplish a single thing without your help.

Onward to the party!

Before the kids arrived, we put stuffed animals out in the chairs so that the children could go ahead and have them too. (Thanks mom for that amazing idea! I love that we are spreading joy together!)

The food was provided by Olive Garden and a sweet family provided all the hot dogs that the children and the volunteers enjoyed.

The kids were given a super cute reusable bag with a brand new Bible, Art kit and then as the evening progressed, filled it with stickers, crafts, candy from the candy store and then the little items we had for them to choose from. (as pictured below) They hear the Christmas Story and have fun with their crafts and getting candy!

While the children are having fun, we take the mom’s to a separate place where I share something encouraging with them and then they shop for their children.

With your help we were able to let each mom choose 5 gifts to take and wrap for Christmas Morning. That’s pretty awesome! You guys are amazing!

After the cards were made, the candy was placed in their bags, we brought the kids over and let them get a toy to take home and enjoy now. They were all asking about then when they got there. Made my heart smile! A simple yet enormous gesture that is only made possible by the generosity of you and so many who make this event possible.

This party is to allow these families to step out of the hustle and bustle of life and have fun for a few hours. Everyone needs to do that don’t you think?

We usually have a tiny gift for the moms, sometimes we don’t have anything for them but they never complain because they love having toys for the kids. This year we gave them all a couple of nice necklace and earrings sets from The Joyful Jewel Junkie A N D we were surprised with a generous donation from Verizon. 21 Families received a brand new smart phone! Talk about being giddy with excitement! I was so thrilled and they were too!

They were so excited to get them! So many of them said it was a wonderful upgrade from their current phone and were beyond grateful for this generous gift!

Isn’t it amazing all that we accomplished because we all pulled our individual resources together! We all cared, gave, spread the word and asked for help. I cannot begin to list everyone that helped but I wanted to highlight a few people. If I forget anyone, it isn’t on purpose, it’s because I’m old and forgetful!

Verizon Wireless – thank you for the amazing gift to these families. I already love you and love your Hopeline program!

Clark Nexsen – thank you for collecting toys for us! You are always so generous to help out!

Iron Mountain (Charlotte Facility) – thank you for collecting toys for us and bringing them to us! Your generosity amazes me!

Gastonia Dodge – thank you for collecting toys for us! Without your focus on older children we would have certainly ran out of items

Olive Garden Gastonia – thank you for the spaghetti, salad and bread sticks! Thank you for allowing us to put angels on your tree! The gifts you collected were incredible! This is such a special treat for these families!

New Grace Baptist Church – for the use of your facilities, volunteers and love of Spreading Joy

Beth Haven Baptist Church – for Collecting toys, volunteers and your love of Spreading Joy

I want to extend a huge thank you to all of the individuals that gave a financial donation to enable us to purchase toys, candy and little treats for the kids. You’ll be getting cards from the children and some photos!

Thank you to everyone who worked to collect toys! Those who asked for help and shared all of the Social Media Posts!

Thank you to everyone who came and volunteered your time! So many hours are invested in this event and there is absolutely no way I could ever pull of something of this size by myself. YOU are Spreading Joy Heroes and I’m so honored to make a difference for others with you.

Thank you to Angie Blevins, who constantly works behind the scenes throughout the entire year to write and ask for donations. I am so thankful for your help, love and compassion for others. You are a gift to Spreading Joy and I’m thankful for you!

Remember, working together with our individual resources made this happen! You are important to so many! You may never know just how much you impacted the hearts of these families but know that you have made a huge difference!

Keep looking for ways to make a difference!

Keep Spreading Joy and being kind!

Thank you for Spreading Christmas Joy with us! Thank you for changing lives with us! Thank you for acting on the compassion that lives within your heart! Thank you!

Want to see more photos and cards? Yes, you really should! Please visit the following places and see the impact that your heart for others really has!

http://instagram.com/spreadingjoyandlove

http://facebook.com/spreadingjoycorp

I hope you’ll like our pages and follow along with us in 2017 because we will show you the things we are doing each to spread joy and make a difference!

*I’m honored to be a brand ambassador for Verizon Wireless. Any and all opinions about their services, products and such are completely my own. I occasionally receive items to review in exchange for my honest opinion. I’m so thankful for their Hope Line Phone program for Women in need.

November 15, 2016 by Spreading Joy

Meeting Needs this Christmas

We know that Christmas is a special time for so many. We also know it’s a painful time for those who have lost a dear loved one recently. We also know many people dread it simply because they cannot give their families what they would love to.

My heart thinks about all those families that were affected by major flooding in West Virginia, Louisiana and North Carolina.

If you remember, we went to West Virginia with 2 truck loads of help and the devastation we encountered was heart breaking.

As part of our Annual Christmas Joy Event this year, we want to include the Children of West Virginia. We want to remind them that others haven’t forgotten even though the media has moved on. We want to fill hearts with Christmas Cheer and hopefully remove some of the overwhelming sadness and possibly dread they are experiencing.

As we prepare to help the children here and there, we’d love for you to partner with us. Donations are low this year and anything will be a tremendous help.

We are going to bring the children (and parents) in and feed them, have them write notes to the children in West Virginia that will be receiving the gifts and do some crafts and such with them. They will receive gifts themselves, as well as shop in our candy store.

Please keep in mind this year that we have zero paid employees, so your donation does’t go to a salary. The Mr. and I make donations to keep the administrative needs covered, so your donation doesn’t go to that either.

Many people are concerned with their donations at Christmas and rightly so.

Here are some ways you can help:

Make a financial donation – Every donation is huge here! Click the paypal button or mail it to us! The info for both of those are in our side bar at the top!
Send stickers – The children will be writing letters to encourage children who have lost everything! Please send all kinds of stickers! Christmas, love, smileys! Any kind!
Send $10 McDonald’s or Wal-Mart Gift Cards – We have several older children and these will be a wonderful gift for them.
Please consider sharing this page daily! Share on facebook, share on twitter, share with friends individually!
Ask others to get involved with a personal email. Point out to them that their donation doesn’t support a salary, it supports families in need.
Consider donating items that children would love. Maybe you own a store, or shop that has items these children would love.
Come volunteer with us. We’d love to have you!

Imagine having your child having lost every favorite toy they had. Imagine starting all over. Imagine wondering where the gifts will come from.

Can you imagine?

Thank you for Spreading Joy with us!

Thank you in advance for your gift!

Thanks for using your voice! It’s a powerful thing!

Thanks for Spreading Christmas Joy with us!

Thank you!

January 16, 2016 by Spreading Joy

Heart for Others

Words just cannot express the love and gratitude I have for you for this Christmas Joy event! Thank you!

Your heart for others is beyond amazing.

Your love and heart for the forgotten kids is inspiring! And yes, you just read that right. One social worker I’ve spoken with in the past called them that. The area we help is where many other organizations often forget.

This year we sent out 100 Invitations to Children in the area! Can you believe it? 100?!? The most ever! I cannot believe how much we’ve grown since 2008!

75 Children and their Moms came to the event! We had all ages from infants to 17 years old this year!

Thanks to your amazing heart for others we feasted on Olive Garden along with hot dogs and chips for the kids.

We had a time of crafts and writing thank you cards with the children.

The Children also had a time of hearing the Christmas Story as well as going through our Candy Store! There were right at 40 different Candies that they could pick and put in their treat bags this year!

Because of your heart for others, we had stickers, markers and other various small gifts to give to all of the children throughout the event! Their bags were running over! Their hearts were running over as well! You should have heard the giggles of delight as they were getting the candy, looking at the stickers and just having a wonderful time! As a matter of fact, YOU should come next year and experience it for yourself!

Thanks to your generosity and heart for others we were able to give each of the moms 4 gifts to wrap that day to take home for Christmas Morning. All of the gifts were at least a $10 Value.

Because you are a person with a ginormous heart for others we were also able to allow each child to walk through and pick out 2 gifts to take with them the day of our event. YES! T W O! Look at just how big your heart is! There is No Grinchiness in you at all!

Your heart for others also allowed us to make a difference for the Moms this Christmas! Because you gave earlier in the year, we were able to give each of them a gift bag with a bracelet, necklace, lotion, lipstick, shower gel and other items. We typically can’t afford to bless the moms this way but because your heart was so giving, loving and caring this year we were able to do more than we normally do!

Thank you for caring about these families during what could be a very sad and difficult time of year for them.

Thank you for giving to someone who can never repay the kindness to you.

Thank you for impacting hearts with great joy and love.

Thank you for Spreading Christmas Joy with us and making a difference!

Thank you for every tweet, every share, every like, every comment, every email asking someone to help, every toy you gave, every dollar you donated, every prayer you prayed… for every single thing you did to make this happen. T H A N K Y O U!

Thank you for your Heart for Others! You Matter and you truly do make a difference!

If I have forgotten anyone, it was not intentional but Thank you to the following for sponsoring:

Olive Garden Gastonia

Olive Garden Northlake

Clark Nexsen

Patterson Pope

Iron Mountain – Charlotte

Sport Clips Denver

Gastonia Dodge

Ms. Wells 2nd Grade Class

Beth Haven Baptist Church

New Grace Baptist Church

Elevation 4:12 Youth Group

ChristianRep.com

Soulsupply.com

Teresa Sykola – Mary Kay Senior Director

The Online Mom

Sara Lowe Author

November 12, 2015 by Spreading Joy

Christmas Joy 2015

What is Christmas JOY 2015?

Glad you asked! It’s our annual event where we bring Moms and Children in for a Christmas party! We allow the moms to shop for presents for their children, allow the children to play games, have crafts and to shop for free at our GINORMOUS Candy store. Yep – C A N D Y store! Usually about 40-50 different candies are theirs for the taking.

All for FREE.

The kids will make thank you cards, and hear the Christmas Story and the moms will receive some encouragement all before choosing and wrapping the gifts they will give to their children on Christmas morning.

When you look at the faces of these kids, you’d think they were receiving PURE Gold! But they are getting love, joy, hot dogs, spaghetti, drinks, dessert and lots of hugs!

Oh yeah, I hug every single one of them. I’m not even kidding about that.

These toys aren’t expensive toys. They are toys that have been donated by people with generous hearts like YOURS!

You are making this possible and I want to say in advance thank you! We need toys, because without these toys, there really wouldn’t be much of an event now would there?

How can you help us get the toys you ask? Wow… thank you for that!

1. You can click the Paypal donate button in the top right corner up there and donate safely and securely and since we are an IRS Approved Non Profit, your donation is tax deductible as allowed by the law. You should know, there are no employees at Spreading Joy. We are all volunteers! Yep, including me, Marie the founder. Your donation will not fund an extravagant salary…..nope, not at all. It will go right back into spreading joy to others!

2. You can Mail a check and avoid paypal fees – Mail to Spreading Joy PO box 1771 Denver NC 28037 and again 100% of it will go toward others! And thank you in Advance!

3. You can shop online at Walmart.com and ship for FREE to our local store! Yep! Don’t you love technology? Our walmart is located at 7131 NC-73, Denver, NC 28037 – please include my name – Marie Wikle as the person that will Pick up. To make all the gifts even, we keep the costs around $10 each. and thank you in advance for this too!

These kids may never get the chance to hug or thank you personally but you should know that your kindness will impact their hearts for a LIFETIME!

How else can you help this year? Wow…aren’t you in the Christmas Spirit this year? I’m sooo glad you asked!

Here are a few other ways you can help!

Collect Toys or Gift Cards – Ask your company, your church, your small group, Sunday School or family to help you collect toys and/or gift cards! Even if you only collect 10 toys, that will go a long way to help! NO amount is too small! (If your organization decides to help in this way, please let me know so that I can list you in our thank you/follow up post.)
Donate National Gift Cards – Wal-mart, McDonalds Etc – We can use these as gifts for the older kids as well as shop with them if necessary
Share this Page – Share this page DAILY on twitter and often on your other Social Media Platforms! You never ever EVER know who is looking for a way to make a difference! S H A R E this page DAILY! Please!
Purchase Toys and send to us – yes the shipping may be a bit more, but I know the JOY of purchasing toys for kids that need the help. You can even send $10 McDonald or Walmart gift cards to help save with the cost of shipping. Every single one helps! (PO Box 1771 Denver NC 28037) I know…I’m repeating myself.
Email and Ask – Send a link to this page in an email challenging everyone you know to give at least $5 or $10 towards the Christmas Needs of Children. Get your child to mail in a buck or 2 and I’ll send them a card and photo after the event so they can keep it.
Get your Children Involved – Teaching kids to give to children less fortunate will enable them to be adults that give. Have the ask family members to help with giving. Adults will love helping kids that help other kids!
Help with Our Candy Store – We want to be able to provide the kids a time of “shopping” in a huge candy store. We had 40 different candies they were able to get last year and need to do the same this year.
Come and Volunteer – We will need people to help set up, to manage “areas”, to help wrap, to pick up food, clean up and crowd control. If you are in the area we would love for you to come and experience this event! You will LOVE it!

Kids are only kids once.

Will you JOYn me and trying to make sure that we can invite as many kids as we possibly can this year? We had 70 last year and would love to have 100 this year.

That means we need at least 500 gifts. That’s a HUGE undertaking for such a small Non Profit but hey, it’s Christmas. Right?

Thank you in advance for your gift!

Thank you in advance for asking others to give!

Thank you in advance for sharing this daily!

Thank you in advance for doing what you can!

Thank you in advance for volunteering!

Thank you in advance for you using your voice! It’s powerful. You tend to forget that… don’t forget it truly is more powerful than you realize.

Have fun making Christmas Joy happen for these kids!