{"id":10187,"date":"2010-11-19T04:09:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T04:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10187"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:36:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:36:27","slug":"day-12-my-bonnie-give","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10187","title":{"rendered":"Day 12 – My Bonnie (Give)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My Bonnie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Melissa just called me a pack rat.\u00a0 Me!\u00a0 A pack rat! … just because she asked me what I had given away today and I showed her the little bow-tie wearing penguin in the picture to the left.\u00a0 She asked, “Where did THAT come from?” And my reply is what elicited the “pack rat” dig:\u00a0 “I’ve had it since college.” She doesn’t realize that this little stuffed animal has significance.\u00a0 It must have been my sophomore year in college.\u00a0 On weekends when I stayed on campus, I would attend the local United Methodist Church, and that year I was just starting to help out with the youth group there a bit.\u00a0 So when the church sent out pre-final-exam care packages to its home-grown college students in far off places, the youth pastor was thoughtful enough to include some of us local college students in the give away as well.\u00a0 It meant a lot to me.\u00a0 I don’t remember what else was in that little cardboard box – probably some candy, a few ink pens, maybe some homemade cookies – but the one thing that stuck with me was this little stuffed animal.\u00a0 Who would have thought to put a stuffed animal in a care package for college students?\u00a0 But there he was – sticking around long after the candy was eaten and the pens ran out of ink. And who would have thought at least one of those college students (perhaps there are many more, we can’t be sure…) would still have that little\u00a0stuffed animal\u00a022 years later? I also remember that Masato, the Japanese exchange student who\u00a0shared the second floor of Morris Hall\u00a0with us\u00a0for the year, took an instant\u00a0shine to the little penguin and referred to it as his “bonnie”.\u00a0 The only thing I could figure was that Masato had gotten his English words mixed up and was calling it a “bunny”.\u00a0 In the end it didn’t matter why he did it, we made fun of him all the same.\u00a0 …and often threw it at him.\u00a0 Such fond memories! Tomorrow our small group is putting together some care packages for disadvantaged kids around the world through Operation Christmas Child.\u00a0 Today I say goodbye to my Bonnie – he has remained with me long enough.\u00a0 He will go into one of those boxes and be shipped overseas to a child who will excitedly unwrap the package, eat the candy, and cradle my Bonnie in his arms. Perhaps, in some small, tangible\u00a0way, Bonnie will demonstrate God’s deep love for that small child.\u00a0 And, for all I know, that\u00a0kid will\u00a0treasure\u00a0Bonnie for the next 22 years … or lose him later that day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melissa just called me a pack rat.\u00a0 Me!\u00a0 A pack rat! … just because she asked me what I had given away today and I showed her the little bow-tie wearing penguin in the picture to the left.\u00a0 She asked, “Where did THAT come from?” And my reply is what elicited the “pack rat” dig:\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10189,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10187\/revisions\/10189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}