Moving The Wall

For weeks our Operation Christmas Child prayer team has been praying for a breakthrough--for God to provide a large quantity of a good anchor item for our boxes.

God blessed us with an answer to those prayers last week when I found some good, high-quality sport bottles for just .25 each.  Please don't ask me where I found them, because I promptly bought them all.

I wondered whether the order would actually be fulfilled because I never got confirmation e-mails on the orders and the company never called me to arrange shipping.

I've asked a team of people to pray about this and God answered again today.

Imagine my husband's surprise when he pulled into the driveway this afternoon and saw the above sight in front of the garage--63 large cartons left by the UPS delivery truck.  My neighbor confirms that all 63 of them came out of one normal-sized brown UPS truck!

I was delighted with these answers to prayer but they posed another dilemma.  Rain was in the forecast and these cartons had to be transported to the storage container at our church--over 6 miles away from my house.  My husband was leaving to play in his golf league so at 4:30 pm he helped me pack the first load of cartons into my minivan before he left.  He was able to get 13 in the van.

Once loaded, I was off on the 6.2 mile drive.  I hit another snag when there turned out to be road work going on as I neared the church that forced me to sit and wait as minutes ticked by.  By God's grace, He moved me to use that time to pray for the children who will received these water bottles.

I got the storage container open--always a chore--and began hauling the cartons.  I had to move and rearrange a number of boxes already stashed.  One blessing, though, is that I was able to stand on the lower cartons to lift bags of stuffed animals onto the top row of cartons to use all the container space.

I finished that load and headed back home for another one (waiting for the road work again)--loaded the car again--and headed out.

(Just repeat the above sentence X 3)

Off and on the skies were gray and threatening rain.  I'd asked Pam, my OCC Media Coordinator, and my OCC Regional Director, Leigh Fisher (who happened to call during the initial loading) to pray that the weather would hold. And, praise God, it did.

I was delighted to see that storage container filling up at last.

By 8:30 pm I was home and the wall was moved--with 52 of the cartons stored in the container and the other 11 stored in my home for another trip on Wednesday.

God is good, as always, and I hope He keeps me in good graces with the UPS guy.