All right, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, but I'm thinking Christmas right now on Kevin Kitsman has issues because once Thanksgiving is over, Christmas is really close.

And I've learned this through years in radio with fundraising and things that we do around the holidays.

But if you wait too long, you're in big trouble if you're trying to do something for Christmas.

So we want to start pre- Thanksgiving with a charity that I've recently gotten to know quite a bit about. It's through Catholic

charities of Kansas City and St. Joe. It's called Christmas Shining Star. And for about the

last 15 years, Christmas Shining Star has been raising money and shopping for hundreds of families

in need and children to have Christmas presents for the

holiday season. It is a wonderful charity. It is anywhere in the Kansas City metropolitan area or St. Joseph,

Missouri, and we know that's the listening audience, and we thought we'd have Bridget Cherpich

on to talk a little bit about how this all works. She's the marketing and communications director

for Catholic charities of Kansas City and St. Joe, and she has informed me a lot about Christmas Shining Star and I'm hoping that everybody's

going to get as excited as me. Hi, Bridget. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so pleased to have you. And we're just going to start with the heavy stuff. You love this program,

Christmas Shining Star, because you are torn apart by the

thought of children that don't have maybe as much as your children have or my children have,

that don't have anything for Christmas. And I suspect that is the basics of why Catholic

charities is so involved with Christmas Shining Star. You're correct. You're correct. I have a hard time going home at night,

knowing that my kids are so lucky. They have me and they have their father and they have

what they need every day. And it's really difficult when you realize that Christmas is coming

along and there are just hundreds of families that have come to us who cannot buy gifts for their kids.

You know, when a mom can't have gifts under the tree, when a dad doesn't have gifts for their kids,

you kind of feel a little bit like a failure and we're trying to fill in that gap and make sure that doesn't happen.

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