‘Tis the season to easily be taken in by them.
I agree. Several times I have heard pitiful stories about needing gas money. A few days later I'll get a whole different story about needing to get to a different place...from the same person I saw a week earlier. Then they get mad when I call them out or they deny the first story.
Three or four times I’ve had women show up at my church asking for gas money to get to someplace distant. There was always a junky car full of kids. Each time I told them that they must sit through the sermon and we would then take a collection. Not long ago a woman did that at my husband’s church and he was the only one who gave her money. She got caught in her lie a few weeks later when she showed up across the county at his “other” evening church. The look on her face when she saw him was priceless. He called her by name and said,”This is the last time Debbie” and gave her some money. You know, it takes nerve to rip people off inside a church.