My Girl Scouts Experience

Andi Burroughs

On the night of December 4, 2017, the Girl Scout Senior/Ambassador troop 1194 went shopping for a family that did not have enough money to get presents for their kids. We went to Target to shop for three kids: a 12 year old boy, an eight year old girl, and a 6 year old girl.  We were not told the children’s names due to privacy issues. I had the honor of shopping for the 12 year old boy. All he had asked for Christmas was warm clothes and Legos, so we got him a lot of warm clothes and a classic set of Legos. When we went to the store we were told his clothes size and a budget. Then we were set free. We decided that this 12 year old boy was going to have good clothing style. There was about 12 girls who were shopping for clothes and toys for the children while our leader shopped for groceries for the family. When we went to pay we had spent over $200 on things for this family. This money was all raised through our cookie sales and fundraisers. We could not deliver the items that night due to it being late.  

One week later we got to deliver the gifts to the family. We drove almost an hour to the far part of Alexandria to their house. They lived in a trailer park, but this was a very poor trailer park; the roads were cracked and falling apart, some of the trailers were just RVs, and most of the trailers didn’t have cars or any other type of transportation. The roads had speed bumos that if you went over 5MPH you would have lost part of your car and they were very narrow. Only one car could fit down at a time. When we got to the house the mom told our translator to put the children’s gifts in the car to act like they were from Santa. After we hid the presents in the her car we went inside to give them the food. They were very grateful for what we were giving them. The 12 year old even asked if we need water or something to eat. They didn’t have a lot but yet they still offered us things. We sang them a Christmas carol and left. Right before we left, the little girl came up to me and said she liked my necklace. I then made the impulsive decision to give it to her. She quickly ran inside to return moments later to give me a bag of her Halloween candy.  It was so sweet. moments like these make me glad for joining Girl Scouts. Plus it makes me happy on my worst days.