First Five Miracle Countdowns

We are on a countdown to our community-wide Operation Christmas Child packing party--one week from today!

For the past five days I've been posting a "miracle a day" as a way to count down the days on my personal Facebook page so I thought I'd post the first five here.

MIRACLE COUNTDOWN--DAY 10 -- only 10 days until the Erie, PA Community-Wide Shoe Box Packing Party. Today's miracle is the donation of paper for each of our boxes by McCarty Printing. If you'd told me a few years ago all our paper would be donated I never would have believed it. Praising God for Chuck and Lorelei Fournier Millet who coordinated this and for Rose Dobson, Kathy Peters Cuneo, and Ann Cuneo Fluegel who stapled it all into packets.

MIRACLE COUNTDOWN--DAY 9--only 9 days until the Erie, PA Community-Wide Shoe Box Packing Party. Today's miracle is washcloths and pencils. Last year I struggled to get enough pencils to put two in each box but this year I have plenty thanks to OCC friend Loretta Tharp who found a great deal on them and bought enough to share. Loretta also found a wonderful deal on washcloths and picked up a few (21,000) for us, too. Problem is--she lives in Waynesboro, PA--hours away from Erie. We prayed for five months about how to get them and God answered when Don and Debbie Foster Sweatman volunteered to drive to pick them up and borrowed the Pavkov's trailer to do it. What a miracle!

MIRACLE COUNTDOWN--DAY 8 -- only 8 days until the Erie, PA Community-Wide Shoe Box Packing Party. Today's miracle is soap. By God's grace we heard of a non-profit called Clean The World and were able to buy soap from them for a lower cost than we have ever purchased it before. This year I tried doing a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo (Community Rocks Inside The Box) to help pay for soap and nearly 1/2 of the cost of the soap was donated through this campaign. I am praising God for each of you who partnered with us in this way. The soap came unwrapped so faithful volunteers are now working to put each bar into a 4" X 4" bag. We will likely have some volunteers at the packing party working on this--so come join us and fill a bag!

MIRACLE COUNTDOWN--DAY 7 -- only 7 days until the Erie, PA Community-Wide Shoe Box Packing Party. Today's miracle is toothbrushes. I thought we'd be buying all our toothbrushes from the same company we purchased from last year but God had other plans. We found a great deal on colorful brushes from a company called Plak Smacker and, by God's grace were given a fluky coupon code that allowed us to get them all for an average cost of 10 cents each. I think of Oxana Nelson who shared about living in an orphanage in Russia where 20 children shared the same toothbrush. Each of these can be a special miracle for the child who receives it. Come help us put them into the boxes on October 4th!

MIRACLE COUNTDOWN--DAY 6 -- only 6 days until the Erie, PA Community-Wide Shoe Box Packing Party. Today's miracle is pens. Did you know the average pencil will write a line 35 miles long while a pen writes only 1.5 - 2 miles? That's why this year we're putting 3 pencils and only 1 pen in our shoe boxes (well, really it's because we got a great deal on pencils.) This year we bought 20,000 really nice misprinted commercial pens and used a 25% off coupon code to get the price down to 3.75 cents per pen. Funny story--the company said they were being shipped by Greyhound. Interesting. We got a call to arrange delivery to the church and when they were actually delivered they were driven up by a guy in a Toyota Celica who picked them up from the Greyhound and transported them. We also got pens locally on sale and using various coupons (love those coupons) -- we might be a few hundred short so if you have unused pens we can use them.

Please pray with us as we count down this last week.  We have several big deliveries coming in the next few days and will need lots of wisdom and volunteers for set-up.

The good news?  God has already accomplished it!