The Perfect Gift

Connie and Brian help prepare shoeboxes filled with Christmas gifts for children in Colombia. Damaris, a representative from Operation Christmas Child, arrives with news that Odyssey’s project has been chosen for a special video. One camera crew will film the boxes being prepared, and another will record the children receiving them. Connie is uneasy when Damaris takes charge of the arrangements, but Whit reminds her that the added help is needed.

Whit leaves to assist Pastor Alden with the belongings of Daniel Hobbs, the church’s longtime maintenance man, who has recently died. The pastor reveals that Hobbs had once served time in prison after attempting to rob a bank with a toy water pistol. He became a Christian there, and after his release the church gave him work and a home in the parsonage. Grateful for the grace he had received, Hobbs spent years quietly helping others.

Among Hobbs’s few possessions is a badly damaged videotape labeled with instructions to play it after his death. Jason manages to recover only fragments of the recording. Whit and the others hear what sounds like references to the top of a house, a penguin, Lisa, and a gift for redemption. A worn stuffed penguin is in the same box, but Hobbs’s large, suspicious dog is far more interested in it than anyone expects.

Whit and Jason first investigate the bank robbery. Liesel Pelner, the teller Hobbs had threatened, explains that he later apologized and repaired her car without charge. She had forgiven him and wanted nothing more from him. Mr. Reyes, who runs the halfway house where Hobbs once lived, remembers how Hobbs returned each week to teach carpentry and mechanics. Hobbs called the small apprenticeship program Redemption Road and dreamed of expanding it.

The mystery grows when Jason learns that Hobbs has inherited one hundred thousand dollars from an aunt. Because Hobbs could not bear to enter a bank after the robbery, the money may never have been deposited. Connie also learns that Damaris insisted that the shoebox video be filmed in Odyssey and then discovers her looking through the windows of Hobbs’s former home. The group wonders whether she knows about the missing inheritance.

Damaris explains that she came for a very different reason. Orphaned as a young child in Romania, she once received her only childhood Christmas present in a shoebox packed by Hobbs. It contained small gifts, a letter, and the words of John 3:16. His generosity made her feel valuable and helped lead her to faith in Christ. She has searched for him so she can tell him what his gift meant, only to arrive after his death.

Damaris also identifies Lisa as Hobbs’s dog and the stuffed penguin as Lisa’s toy. Once Connie returns it, Lisa becomes friendly enough to let Jason approach her doghouse. Jason realizes that the garbled clue refers not to the top of Hobbs’s home but to the roof of Lisa’s house. Beneath a loose board he finds the missing money and a note directing that the entire inheritance be given to Mr. Reyes for Redemption Road. Lisa also receives a new home at the halfway house, where she can guard the expanded program.

During the live video from Colombia, everyone watches children joyfully open the shoeboxes. One boy finds Brian’s expensive new watch, which has accidentally been packed with the gifts. Instead of demanding it back, Brian sees the child’s delight and is glad that the mistake has made him happy. From one shoebox sent years ago to Hobbs’s hidden inheritance and Brian’s lost watch, each gift reaches farther than its giver could have expected.