Monday, gifts wrapped for the teachers at Jack Elementary cover the rugs at Dayspring United Methodist Church, displaying the message: “Wrapped with love.”

For volunteers at Dayspring United Methodist Church in Tyler, the Christmas season provides a new way to serve those at Tyler ISD’s Jack Elementary, the school that has been adopted as a mentorship mission for the church.

“For five or six years, we have had a great relationship with Jack Elementary,” said Dayspring UMC mentorship member Elicia Eckert. “We have very intentionally paired up mentors with kids that could use a mentor. Someone to check in on them, be an accountability partner – someone in their life who can also love them.”

Eckert explained that since the pandemic hit, the church hasn’t been able to go on to the school grounds to continue their mentorship program.

Last year, the church volunteered nearly 800 hours of service to the school through their mentorship program.

“The little boy that I met with all last year as his mentor – I haven’t seen him since March. Things like that are really tough,” Eckert said. “We’re now getting to the point where we can maybe start meeting with some kids outside. We’re trying to find a way to be a presence when we can’t be a presence.”

Despite not able to see their kids, the mentorship team at Dayspring UMC is continuing their tradition of wrapping the gifts that teachers bought for their families and students.

Dayspring’s adoption doesn’t just end with the children though; Eckert said that the church has adopted the school as a whole – and that includes the teachers.

In previous years, the church group would meet on the school campus to help teachers with their wrapping. This year, the team did the work inside the church.

By the end of the morning, the group wrapped nearly 150 gifts and delivered them back to the school.

“We understand the policies of the district, we can’t actually be on campus, so we’re just going back and forth, picking up gifts, bringing them up, wrapping them up and taking them back for them,” Eckert said. “It’s just something little we can do for the teachers at this time of year that can make a big difference.”

For the volunteers at Dayspring, service is something they say they’re called to do.

“If you’re at church, and you have a school next to you, and you don’t see that as an opportunity for mission work and for service, then I don’t know what’s happening inside that church,” Eckert said. “We’re right next door to a school, so it makes sense to us to love that school. There’s teachers on that campus that need love, there’s students on that campus that need love, and that’s something we can do.”