If you walk into the Hesseltine home, there’s a kitchen island where a lot of life happens. Homework gets finished there, conversations unfold, and a few years ago, a catalog landed right on the counter.
When Brad and Jenny opened the Give Joy catalog with their four daughters, Della, Raegan, Sadie, and Lizzy, it was more than just turning pages. It became a window to the world.
“It’s hard to have a global perspective when you haven’t been around the globe yourself,” Jenny shared. “The catalog does such a great job of helping them imagine what that is like. They saw a bicycle for a girl and thought about how she wouldn’t just use it for fun like they do. It was actually her transportation tool.”
That simple catalog sparked something big in the Hesseltine girls. When they saw pictures of hungry children in Haiti and Abaco, Raegan had a clear reaction: “Seeing how fortunate we are compared to what they don’t have… we just want to help them.”
So, the family got creative. They turned their kitchen into a full-scale holiday bakery, frosting an absurd amount of sugar cookies, hosting bake sales, and running candy-bar stands. The girls took charge, delivering plates of Christmas cheer to neighbors and turning flour and sugar into hundreds of dollars for families halfway across the world.
Even Sadie felt the depth of what they were doing: “I was happy that we could make a difference and help kids get what they need… but it also made me feel sad looking at what we have compared to them.”
For Brad and Jenny, watching their daughters balance that empathy with action was everything. “Generosity can be creative,” Brad reflected. “You’re empowering people and enabling them to work by handing them the tools… I just love that part of the Give Joy catalog.”
At its heart, Give Joy isn’t about writing a check or checking off a list. It’s about passing on love. As Jenny put it, “I just want everyone to know that they’re seen and loved and known by God. To pass on even just a piece of that here on earth… I think that’s what we’re here for.”
This season, grab a copy, gather around your island, and find where your passion intersects with a need. You might just start a ripple of joy that changes a family forever.
About Many Hands:
Many Hands is an Iowa-based nonprofit dedicated to transforming together, to be in action, in a broken world. We desire to walk alongside the community and empower individuals and families by focusing on education, agriculture, leadership, safe structures, youth programs, and early childhood development. Together, we can rebuild lives and restore hope, one person, one family, one community, at a time.
