What a great Operation Christmas Child Celebrarion Meeting we had on Tuesday, April 26th here in Erie, PA. We were blessed that Grace Church allowed us to use a meeting room in their comfortable facility and Leigh Fisher, our OCC Regional Director came from Baltimore to be with us and even treated our team to dinner from Chick-fil-A before the meeting.
There were 24 of us at the meeting--a definite answer to prayer--and I think the best part was hearing firsthand from two members of the Grace Church mission team who were able to distribute Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes in Haiti. Pam and Brenda shared from their heart about how much these boxes meant to the children who received them and Pam crafted an amazing video of the shoebox distribution. The greatest celebration of all came at that distibution when 14 children responded to the gospel message and came forward to pray to receive Christ. All of heaven was rejoicing that day and you can't ask for a better celebration than that.
I'm also celebrating another blessing that happened back on April 15th. That was the day that our Biggest Loser competition ended at work and I was declared The Biggest Loser (no surpise--I've known that for a while). In this case, though, it was an official title I earned by losing the highest percentage of weight over 10 weeks. I let all the other 'contestants' know that the prize money was being used to pay for the 1000 water bottles I ordered for shoeboxes a few weeks before from a tip I got on the Operation Christmas Child Extranet website. The water bottles were only about 20 cents each but to have the bill for them paid just by NOT eating was a real cause for celebration.
This week I found white cotton 'bucket hats' on the Oriental Trading Company website and was able to get them for about 17 cents each. Another cause for celebration.
If you want to be blessed in another way to hear about how God is working right now (even with a guitar with 5 strings) at shoebox distributions in Panama, check out Matthew West's blog at www.matthewwest.com
Honestly, seeing God provide for all our needs is the biggest reason to celebrate every day of the year
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