The Rich Family英语美文
I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was fourteen, my little sister, Ocy, was twelve and my older sister, Darlene, was sixteen. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with no money and seven school-aged kids to raise.
By 1946, my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special holiday offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.
When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy fifty pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save twenty dollars of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house- and yard-cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby-sat for everyone we could. For fifteen cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for a dollar. We made twenty dollars on potholders. That month was one of the best of our lives.
Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about eighty people in church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be twenty times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The night before Easter, we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had seventy dollars for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.
But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about our old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich.
When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting in the second row form the front. Mom put in the ten-dollar bill, and each of us kids put in a twenty-dollar bill.
We sang all the way home from church. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon, the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp twenty-dollar bills, one ten-dollar bill and seventeen one-dollar bills.
Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling poor. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and our late Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knives that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.
That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor, I thought. I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my clothes and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed -- I didn’t even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!
I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over one hundred students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.
We sat in silence for along time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally, on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never know we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in, and she sang only one verse.
At church we had a speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said one hundred dollars would put a roof on a church. The minister added, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?” We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene, Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.
When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over one hundred dollars. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering form our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.” Suddenly it struck us! We had given eighty-seven dollars of that “little over one hundred dollars.”
We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on, I’ve never been poor again.
-
下雪心语大全50句
下雪天我以为每个人会变的不一样点,外面的高楼大厦都像小学作文那样银装素裹,小汽车也都铺设了新的颜色,说实话,我还没见过雪,记得小学邻居写了一篇《我渴望见到雪》被贴在优秀作文墙好久。所以第一眼看到雪我有些许激动,但是雨夹雪的北京户外,每个人都在专注着自己的...
-
2023年经典哲理的句子汇编77条
理想是石,敲出星星之火,理想是火,点燃熄灭的灯,理想是灯,照亮夜航的路,理想是路,引你走到黎明。下面是小编为大家整理推荐的哲理的句子77条,供大家参考借鉴,希望可以帮助到有需要的朋友。1、时间没有尽头,生命有其长短。在无限的时光隧道里,计较太多就是对有限的生命的一...
-
【推荐】2023年哲理的句子合集90条
世上许多事,只要肯动手做,就并不难。万事开头难,难就难在人皆有懒惰之心,因为怕麻烦而不去开这个头,久而久之,便真觉得事情太难而自己太无能了。于是,以懒惰开始,以怯懦告终,懒汉终于变成了弱者。下面是小编为大家收集的哲理的句子90条,仅供参考,大家一起来看看吧。1、失...
-
【实用】2023年正能量的语录大合集100条
梦想:自己要先看得起自己,别人才会看得起你。下面是小编为大家收集的正能量的语录100条,希望对大家有所帮助。1、机关算尽赚来广厦千幢,不过眠一席之地,耗心竭智争得钟鸣鼎食,无非食一日三餐。不要忙个不停,每天应该有些闲暇面对自己,了解自己,学会和自己相处,才是人生...
相关文章
- 英语短文:City Life Compared with Rural Life
- 高中英语作文:My approach to difficulties in learning
- 英语四级作文The Importance of Physical Exercise
- I Am a Little Employee of My Father 初中英语作文
- My healthy lifestry英语作文
- My First Chemistry Teacher英语四级作文
- 朗文英语歌曲The family circle家庭圈
- 少儿英语小故事:She Practices Flips for the Olympic
- Letter that Changed My Life大学英语作文
- The place of Science and Technology in Modern Life英语作文