GIVING BIG… GIVING BACK… GIVING BEYOND OURSELVES!

What are you waiting on? Why do you assume that hoarding  and heaping material, physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual benefits, blessing in a safety deposit box, saving account or your heart are whats going to satisfy you in the long run? People are hurting, dying, and losing everything right around us and yet we do nothing. OK, well we do Christmas, Thanksgiving and if they are lucky we do Easter. We go out and “give” to the “needy”. I am generalizing, and understand there are those who actually get it and GIVERS are who they are and GIVING is what they do!

peculiarplace, GIVING is a MUST! It is not some line in the Bylaws or some slogan that sounds great on marketing material, but it is who WE are! He is and has required it of us, so make no mistake, it is a principle that will be a building block for our celebration/gatherings as well as our daily lives. Give what? Give of your time, we have adopted John Hope Elementary School and will continue to pursue that relationship with a ferocious fervor. Give of your monies, we blessed Old Fourth Ward last Christmas by randomly giving away 2000.00 worth of Visa gift cards to the community. Give of yourself, your dreams, ambitions, love, heart, strengths, business, network, and and and… the list goes on forever JUST BE PREPARED TO GIVE AND GIVE BIG at peculiarplace.

Imagine a community in the heart of the city, who was not only proud of the community itself and its history, but proud of each and every individual in that community who COMMITED to play a part in making Him famous, bringing the community together, the schools better, the neighborhoods safer and bringing a nonnegotiable peace to the  life of its residents!!!

That is peculiarplace….

Letter #1
From: C.A.W.

Thank you so much for the gift card. I was sure it was some kind of scam until I went online and looked at the GiftCardLab and PeculiarLove websites.

We truly need the money this holiday season as it has been a very rough year for us. My husband was a contractor who is owed almost $20,000 from work he has completed over the past year. My husband continued to work at great expense to us, hoping that some or all of the money would eventually come through. However, with the economy in a downward spiral, most of the companies are filing for bankruptcy, and we will never see that money.

In November he started a salary job. We are trying to repair the damage from the past year and avoid filing for bankruptcy ourselves, but it is tough. We didn’t buy any Christmas presents for ourselves or our one year son. I will use the gift card to buy groceries and diapers.

Thank you again so much for this unexpected gift. It truly comes as a blessing in the very difficult time.

Merry Christmas!
The “W” Family
Letter#2
From: M.B.

we received a credit card from you guys and we were so surprised because we were looking forward for some extra money to give to our niece who is a very good student in elementary school and she needed some clothes for school. I called it a “Christmas miracle”. Thank you so much for this Christmas miracle. We made a very good girl happy.

I want to thank all of you who prayed with us and this outreach effort! We are believing God for 5-10 families to develop relationships with and so far so good!!! Next year, we plan to do 10,000 dollars worth of gift cards!!!

Once the site is launched I would appreciate it you would pass the link on to ALL of your friends on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else you connect with people!

We really want to hear how people around the world are giving back! Sharing the love hope and promise Of this Christmas season is our goal!!

Stay tuned!!!

In just a week or so, peculiarplace is going to do for the first time something we plan to do forever! Give Back! At a time when so many people are hurting, so many shelters and food pantry’s have more people in need than food, we wanted to provide some people with a little something to maybe help them have a glimpse of Christmas.

I ordered these bad boys today and cannot wait until we get them. I have been so blessed to be surrounded by a family and launch team who are givers and believe in sacrificial giving! I love my crew!!

So, here is how it is going to work. We are simply going to ride around Old Fourth Ward, jump out of the car and place a gift card, denomination between $10.00 & $100.00, in their mailbox!!! We plan on saving at least twenty of the cards to walk through, Underground, Five Points Station, as well as Auburn & Edgewood Ave., putting these cards in the hands of individuals we randomly pick out. We plan to do the face to face action two days before Christmas and be “mailbox bandits”, striking at anytime when the gift cards arrive.

We are also creating a website to allow you and others to tell us how you are giving back, what you might be doing for someone in need this Christmas, and also a chance for those who received the cards to tell us what they did with their “extra” money.

What do you think?