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I love the Christmas holiday season and this Christmas is certain to be the best I can recall.

This year our all-company Christmas gathering was a great party as usual.  It included the typical food, fun, & fellowship. This year the staff voted and chose a private bowling party, and as expected it was a blast.  And yes, it included that awkward moment for me where the staff presents me with a Christmas gift. Don’t get me wrong I am very thankful, humbled, and blessed each year.  But honestly, I am much better at giving than receiving and in reality I receive my best gifts everyday of the year with the opportunity to work with such great people at Premier Studios.

But this year was much different.

At a church service weeks ago, one of our staff had been challenged to make a personal difference in the life of someone in need.  And by demonstrating this effort in-turn try to encourage others in his community to do the same.  The deal was this, unlike the usual offering where people place cash into the offering plate at church, that particular Sunday the offering plates had been previously filled with envelops and each person was supposed to take an envelop out of the offering plate. In each envelop was cash to be used as seed-money to bless someone else.   Yes, very unusual but brilliant.  The envelop he selected held $30 dollars in it.

After much thought, he determined a simple concept; a personal-care-kit for the homeless.  The kit included items like a bar of soap, toothbrush, towel, sanitizer, toothpaste, and other very basic everyday items that we all take for granted.  He then brought his kit to the office and showed it to a few others on the team, many of whom responded saying, “I want to do the same”.  It was through this process that someone suggested that a great Christmas gift for me this year would be a “gift of giving” and that simple suggestion set into motion Premier Studios’ employee’s reaching into their pockets and multiplying that initial seed-offering by some 1,900%.

The monies were then used to buy many more supplies and employees spent their own time after-hours, both at the Kansas City and Nashville offices assembling personal-care-kits for the homeless.  A few weeks ago several days were selected and Premier Studios’ team members took to the streets of Kansas City and Nashville distributing these kits to the homeless.

What’s most important here is that I knew nothing about any of this.   At our annual Christmas party the story was told as you have heard here, and I was presented with one of the personal-care-kits and the greatest Christmas present ever; they gave me a gift of giving.  They gave of their time, resources, and from hearts of compassion for those less fortunate. Others have been blessed. I have been blessed.

To everyone at Premier Studios, thank you from the bottom of my heart! You are amazing people!

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