The Spirit of this Season

I read this story and it was encouraging to me of how Americans are not waiting for something to happen. They are making things happen. They are not just looking for handouts, they want to chip in as well. This is a great story of someone in need who wants to help out others in need. This is the spirit of America and I felt others should read this story especially because the tough times we are currently facing.

The spirit of this season: Be thankful, spend less

By Rick Hampson, Judy Keen and Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

Giving families a hand

The story of pumpkin pies across America began last summer in Michigan with Kim Neubacher, 33, mother of six, whose husband lost his job with an auto parts supplier; whose car broke down; whose 6-year-old was hospitalized with an infection; whose electric bill balance was $3,000; and whose spirit was unbowed.

She called Family-to-Family, a private charity in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., that matches families that have more with families that have less, as founder Pam Koner puts it.

What Koner really liked was that "Kim didn't just ask for help. She said, 'I want to help' " — to find partner families for other families in her town of Burton, just outside recession-battered Flint.

Koner matched Kim and Kelli Weeks, 29, a lawyer in San Francisco.

Kim's need for help met Kelli's need to do something more than work and play. She wanted to show a mother, struggling to provide the basics for her children, that someone cared. Also, "Michigan was part of the draw for me," Kelli says. "Everybody's reading about GM and Chrysler."

She's been able to recruit about 20 girlfriends to link up with other Burton families. In California, she says, "A lot of our friends are losing their jobs, too."

Each month she pays for a package of groceries for the Neubachers, and personally sends them a box with things like backpacks, coats or medicine.

This month, she also decided to surprise the family with a turkey and a pumpkin pie — baked according to her family's recipe.

On Sunday she had her Family-to-Family friends over to her place for a pie bake-a-thon for their Michigan families.

Kelli stored 12 pies that night in the freezer of her neighborhood grocery store.

On Monday she and a friend packed them in coolers with ice, brought them to a FedEx office and overnighted them to Burton.

Kelli will spend Thanksgiving at her parents' place on Lake Arrowhead in San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. Kim will be at home with her family, 2,000 miles away. But they plan to celebrate together by sharing photos online.

Things are looking up for the Neubachers. Kim's husband, David, is in college full-time and working two part-time jobs; the kids are healthy; the electric bill is paid; the mortgage is only a month behind.

But without Kelli's help, Kim says, her family might have had to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the Salvation Army.

Her takeaway: "We don't always have to rely on the government. We can help each other."

Keen reported from Chicago. Koch reported from McLean, Va. Contributing: Emily Bazar and Marisol Bello in McLean; The Associated Press