The Greatest Gift

Group it is great to be able to report such a wonderful story, at such a wonderful time of the year. This past week end we got to participate in witnessing a child receive the greatest Christmas present of his life. At this time I would like to introduce you all to Eddy Ancrum a fifth grader (10 years old) from Burns Elementary School. Eddy is a wonderful kid often characterized as a gentle giant. He has a warm heart and has been participating in Take It To The Streets Family Field Day since the very beginning. Eddy lives about two blocks from the field and is always the first one there and the last one to leave. He is not hard to miss when he is at the field he is often found handing out drinks and filling cups full of ice for all the kids, he takes this job very seriously (don’t mess with Eddy).

Each weekend we take a van load of children to the North Charleston Dream Center for the Noon Church service. About a month ago Eddy who has never gone to church nor anyone in his family that I know of showed interest in attending. I told Eddy if he would like to join us to walk to two blocks to Alex’s Restaurant and if he was there at 10:30 then I would buy him pancakes. So somehow this message got mixed up and he arrived at 8:30 and he waited for two hours for us to arrive. He walked up to me and said “hey man where have you been”, at that moment I knew he was all in. So last week at Church Eddy told Kim Wiggins that he wanted to be Baptized! As you can image we were elated. As the week went on the leadership team talked about the logistics of Eddy being Baptized. On Saturday in true Eddy fashion he arrived at the Field early in 45 degree raining weather, however today he was going to step it up a notch. Instead of running the drink station Eddy wanted to be apart of bring his community an eternal supply of water. Eddy decided he wanted to join Matt Vegel and hand out food and pray for his neighbors in the community. Five teams set out for Neighborhood Fellowship and the last team to return, you guessed it Eddy and Matt. Eddy was so excited he did an interview (Travis Evens Videographer extraordinary) along with Matt he shared the days blessings.

The next morning Sunday it was raining and quite a miserable day. We pulled into the parking lot at Alex’s at 10:30 and at the first table as we walked in Eddy was sitting waiting for us. As I sat down I was reminded that I owed him a bible, so I went to the trunk of my car and had the glorious honor of signing his first bible. As I gave it to Eddy he asked me if he was going to get Baptized today (I love his persistence)? I didn’t even have time to answer the question as Eddy was so excited to share a dream he had the night before. Eddy said “I had a dream last night and Jesus was in it”! I said wow really what did he look like? Eddy said “he was a tall white man, with long white hair and a long white beard, and he was glowing”. I said what did he do? Eddy said “Jesus asked me to help him, he was chopping wood and I was to grab the logs and he would split them in half”. As you can image all the hairs stood up on my body and I as well as everyone else that was sitting with us was blown away. All of this coming from a ten year old WOW! At that moment I knew we had to figure out away for him to be Baptized TODAY!

As we got to Church we checked to see if the Baptism tank was full, it was not. So I went to Eddy and told him that we don’t have a place to perform the Baptism indoors so we are going to have to do it outside, where it was raining and cold. Eddy said “I don’t care”. So in typical Take It To The Streets style we packed up all the kids and a handful of volunteers and headed to my neighborhood pool (which was closed and crazy cold 50 degrees). While Eddy was changing into his bathing suit he was jumping up and down, there was an excitement on his face I have never seen before. All the kids lined up along the pool with the volunteers as Eddy, Jesse and I braved the ice cool water. At this point the pictures tell the rest of the story. I hope that this story warms your heart this holiday season. Know that there is hope being planted in North Charleston and children that from the outside may look and seem poor and deprived are some of the richest children of all! Welcome my Brother Eddy Ancrum a REAL M.O.G (Man Of God) to the family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The pictures are in time order, Check out his eyes in the last photo – Look out Eddy is Coming!

Connor McIntyre