It was 1976, two days before Christmas and I was in a very wet and cold Vienna. I and a group of friends were spending the obligatory backpacking year in Europe between high school and university.

Long hair, dirty, clothes worn, we were on our way to the train station in Vienna when we passed by a patisserie. On display were Viennese pastries. Lured by the sight and smell we entered and asked the price. Our faces fell when we realized that the cost clearly was greater then our strict budget could afford.

However, hunger taking hold of us, we asked for one pastry, which we thought we would split between the group of us. The lady at the counter gave us the price and directed us to the cashier while she wrapped the pastry to go.

Later, on the train, we were shocked to find upon opening it, that the lady had added several other large pastries to our order along with a Christmas note.

I have received more expensive gifts then those pieces of pastry. I have received many gifts from family and friends that have moved me. However, something about this woman, who did not know our names and certainly was not inspired by our image, adding to our order to give us a Christmas gift is one of my better Christmas memories.

Since 1976, I have had the opportunity to live and travel in many places. I have seen villages in Africa where mothers have to choose which of the family eats in a given day. I have seen people working 12 hours a day and only bringing enough resources home to barely survive. I will never forget the line of Kurdish Iraqi refugees over the mountain pass, trying to flee the poison gas and enter Turkey, their only possessions on their backs.

I don't quite know how to balance this reality for so many in our world and my gift in 1976.

Maybe one response is to learn from that experience.

The lady in Vienna chose to make a gift to a group of dirty, long haired backpackers that had no business being in her upper middle class patisserie. Years later this gift still brings warm memories to me.

We all have the opportunity today to make gifts to people living in real need. These are not people choosing to live on a budget and enjoy a year away from it all, but people working hard, struggling to feed their families, find resources for children to get school, and trying to glimpse any ray of hope for themselves and their families.

MEDA has a number of giving opportunities for your Christmas gifts. This Christmas Store is designed not only to give a gift for this year, but to give a gift of opportunities for families to become self-sufficient. I encourage you to look at these opportunities and choose one, two or more.

My prayer is that 30 years from now, some middle aged man or woman in Tanzania, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Nicaragua, Mexico, or New Orleans will reflect that in 2006 they had an unexpected opportunity given their family - an opportunity that allowed their family to turn the corner towards a future.