Monroe County CPS hosts third annual Christmas event
SHANNON, Miss. (WCBI) For a few hundred children in Monroe County, Christmas became that much sweeter as the Monroe County Child Protection Services held its third annual Christmas event.
Johnson Chapel’s Life Center was transformed into a sweet treat for 250 families as Monroe County Child Protection Services hosted its Candy Cane Christmas. Tabatha Trice, supervisor of Monroe County CPS said the event helps give support and love to their foster children and other families in need after what’s been a hard year.
“Yes, we are their family, the foster parents we want to support them because they are the ones assisting the children on a day-to-day basis. We also want to let the children know that we love them, we are here for them and we want to ensure that all needs are being met,” Trice said.
Children and their families enjoyed a Christmas Carnival, complete with games, a meal, and gifts galore. Trice said the event is not only for those in Monroe County but for any county that’s willing to partner with them.
“We sponsored a total of 250 children, 100 of those children are foster children. A lot of the other children are those that’s in need within our community that families need assistance and couldn’t receive assistance from any other organization. But what we do is we partner with different agencies to meet the needs and not just for Monroe County but for any additional counties that partners with us,” she said.
Dr. Jeffery Gladney, pastor of Johnson Chapel said the church is elated to be able to host the event and to have the space to accommodate those in attendance. He said it helps them to fulfill their mission of being a community focused church.
“And we’re just thankful that we have the space and capacity for them to be able to host such an event as this and we’re just elated because it helps fulfill our mission with being community focused,” Gladney said.
But the greatest gift of today’s event wasn’t the many gifts that were given and the relief the families felt especially after coming from under the shutdown and continuing to bounce back. The greatest gift was that many children and families received an introduction to Jesus, and that is the greatest gift of all.
Trice said they were able to serve the families because of the teamwork of the many organizations that came together to make this event possible.
