By Beverly Beckham, Boston Herald columnist
Three time a day they stop and pray. There’s a prayer room outside the warehouse. Prayer keeps them on course. Prayer keeps them focused on God.
It’s all about God at My Brother’s Keeper. You step into the warehouse, converted for Christmas into Santa’s workshop, and it’s magical. You hear “Frosty the Snowman” and see rows and rows of new bikes and shelves packed high with toys.
Men are sorting things and women are wrapping and volunteers come and go through one door, while a police officer, with a bag of gifts, appears at another.
It’s typically Christmas.
What is not typical is that all this is being done in the name of God. Christmas is about Christ here. My Brother’s Keeper is unapologetically a Christian ministry whose mission is “To bring the Love and Hope of Jesus Christ to those we serve.”
God guides, God provides.
My Brother’s Keeper serves all people, whatever their faith. Eleven months of the year this Brockton-based ministry provides furniture and food. Need is the only criteria. Ask and you shall receive. It’s only at the end of a delivery, when people are saying thanks, that the guys who lug in the furniture reply, “Don’t thank us. We’re just the delivery people.” And hand over a crucifix.
My Brother’s Keeper is able to do this because it accepts no federal money. Begun in 1988 in the basement of one couple’s home, it is 100 percent privately funded and has only two paid staff but hundreds of volunteers.
Last year it made more than 30,000 deliveries in 58 communities from Dorchester to Taunton. In 1991, when it began providing Christmas gifts too, it took care of just 14 families. Twelve years later, it brought food and gifts to 1,508 families and toys to more than 5,000 kids. This year, more than 2,000 families have asked for help.
Every gift that leaves the warehouse bears this sticker: “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” The founder of My Brother’s Keeper, who does not want his name mentioned (“This isn’t about me”), says that for many children this sticker is an introduction to Jesus.
People ask him, “How do you get so much work done with volunteer help?”
“We’re not working. We’re serving,” he says.
A few years ago a man started donating bikes. Now his entire family donates bikes, 155 of them this year. Another family donates helmets, another Game Boys. Corporations donate. Hundreds of people give money. Churches set up giving trees. And hundreds more adopt a family for Christmas.
My Brother’s Keeper has no cash reserves. It gives away everything it gets.
This year, as in past years, it needs volunteers, sponsors, toys and people willing to give. “This year, as rough as things are, Christ needs us more than ever,” its leader says. For the true meaning of Christmas don’t go to the mall. Visit www.mybrotherskeeper.com instead.