Rivermont Collegiate's chapter of the National Honor Society partnered with World Relief to get Christmas gifts to refugee families. We set up a place where students and parents could donate gifts (we told them the gender and age of the child and they donated an appropriate gift), which we would then get to the families. I was responsible for the logistics of the whole thing and delivery to a zone containing two recipient families.
Gifts loaded, my dad and I went driving around a nearby city to locate the houses. They were both in apartment complexes in a somewhat run-down part of town. At the first house, it took a little while to find which apartment the gifts were supposed to go to - I didn't have the names of the people and several entrances didn't have apartment IDs. The one we tried first was fortunately correct. The family was Vietnamese (maybe?) and spoke no English. It took a bit of friendly-facing and motions of offering the wrapped package, but they accepted it and we left.
For the second family, we had several gifts, since they had several children. We knocked on the door of the apartment we had written down, and it was answered by an older gentlemen who, upon seeing the wrapped gifts in my hand, said "no" and led us down to another apartment. I think his family occupied two apartments and the other one was used by the children. (He also seemed to be understanding what was going on.) After some language-based confusion, they accepted the set of presents and we left.
I don't know whether either family understood any of what we were saying. I hope they understand the whole cultural thing of Christmas gift giving.
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