The Smell of Hope

On Monday, November 22nd our Operation Christmas Child Northwestern PA area team gathered at Chick-fil-A to celebrate all God's done for us in this collection season. Our final total came in at 27,444 (not counting the 8 boxes that came in after the trucks were sent off). This is 5100 more boxes than we collected last year for a 23% increase.

This isn't the 30,333 we were praying for, but I believe it's what God knew we could handle. Our trucks were full and the Warren collection center ran out of cartons long before the boxes were all cartonized. Now we can make better logistics plans for next year and be ready to receive an even larger harvest of boxes.

I took a couple of lazy days over the Thanksgiving holiday and now I'm getting back at it. By God's grace I got letters to the editors off to 8 newspapers in our area of NW PA and now I'm working on writing thank-you notes to the churches who contributed boxes for Operation Christmas Child.

Truthfully I'm not a fan of writing by hand. I feel like those days in school when the class was punished by having to write 100 times "I will not talk when the teacher is talking." But I know it's important to thank and encourage the donors so I'm asking God to help me push through it and persevere instead of quitting so often. I have 30 done so far and it wouldn't take long if I could stay motivated.

It was such a joy to watch the Community Celebration live via streaming video from the Charlotte, NC Processing Center this morning. But it made me miss being there even more.

There's a particular smell at the processing center--kind of a combination of the smell of soap and crayons and candy and rubber bands and tape. It's hard to describe but for me it's a smell of coming home. And, when you get right down to it, it's really the smell of hope and joy.

I'm remembering that smell right now and I'm smiling, filled with hope and joy.