{"id":2606,"date":"2017-11-17T20:55:21","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T20:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/an-unexpected-christmas-miracle\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:23:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:23:59","slug":"an-unexpected-christmas-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/2017\/11\/17\/an-unexpected-christmas-miracle\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unexpected Christmas Miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/02\/family.jpg\"><img class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4051\" src=\"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/02\/family.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"452\" height=\"236\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As a young woman, Ava made the decision to venture out on an adventure with her four-year-old daughter, moving away from her family to travel and study.<\/p>\n<p>Ava was determined to prove to herself and her family that she could make it on her own and worked two jobs to make ends meet. Many days were challenging and there were times when she had to choose between paying for transportation to school and eating a meal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never let on I was struggling,\u201d says Ava.\u00a0 \u201cI always looked presentable, but underneath I didn\u2019t have a cent in my pocket. My daughter and I literally lived day by day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With her first Christmas on her own approaching quickly, Ava began to worry. Would she be able to put any presents under their meagre tree? How would she tell her daughter there would be no Christmas stocking or turkey dinner?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to The Salvation Army Christmas Hamper and Angel Tree programs, Christmas arrived in our little apt.\u00a0 and in our hearts all those years ago.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThank you for giving us hope when things seemed so hopeless!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a young woman, Ava made the decision to venture out on an adventure with her four-year-old daughter, moving away from her family to travel and study. Ava was determined to prove to herself and her family that she could make it on her own and worked two jobs to make ends meet. Many days [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-2606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-us","category-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An Unexpected Christmas Miracle - British Columbia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salvationarmy.ca\/britishcolumbia\/2017\/11\/17\/an-unexpected-christmas-miracle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Unexpected Christmas Miracle - British Columbia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As a young woman, Ava made the decision to venture out on an adventure with her four-year-old daughter, moving away from her family to travel and study. 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