Set-Up Commences

I need to get better about taking pictures of what's actually happening but I always seem to be too busy to think about it. Yesterday was our first day of set-up for our Operation Christmas Child packing party.

My husband met the truck in the morning and got the 6 pallets containing 160 cartons of flat shoeboxes and 720 cartons placed in the church Commons area. On a sad note, I found out last night that he didn't get the labels and tape that were supposed to be delivered at the same time. I really, really need those labels so I'm praying he finds them when he calls the trucking company today.

Last night Jeff Pinto and I moved all 160 cartons of boxes (weighing maybe 30 pounds each) from the Commons area to the youth rooms behind the gym. I used muscles I forgot I had and got a good workout. Not sore this morning, though, by God's grace.

Meanwhile, we had about 5 other volunteers opening cartons of coloring books, pens, pencils, etc. and we amassed a large amount of cardboard already.

Then 3 of us worked on assembling boxes. The GO boxes look so different in plain white. We said they looked like doughnut boxes and it felt like we were working in a bakery. We got 300 boxes assembled. A long way from the 5000 I'm hoping to have ready by Saturday before the party begins--but it's a start. Finding space to put them is a challenge, too.

This morning I read in Isaiah 37:36 "Then the Lord went out and put to dath a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies." God can have the victory without us--even while we're asleep.

Part of me wanted to wake up this morning and hear that God had packed all of those boxes while I was asleep. But part of me is glad that He's waiting until Saturday to move through US to get the victory.

What a joy to watch it happen again!