Tallying

Only TEN DAYS until our 2014 Operation Christmas Child packing party (gulp).  Today there were five of us who spent some time bagging soap to get ready.

Meanwhile my husband was trying to strategize how we can move the pallets of boxes and cartons that will be delivered in a truck next Monday without a lift gate.  Can we rent/borrow a pallet jack and skid steer or should we just hand carry the stuff into the church using volunteers throughout the week?

I'm starting to remember how much time it takes to do the set-up work and get labels on those boxes.  And this year we're adding the task of bagging the soap.

Then tonight I did a preliminary tally of items and costs.  It seems I've spent more than 25% over last year's total while having fewer items.  I'm not sure how that happened.

I have enough of the basics, I think, but I'm just not sure the items will adequately fill all the boxes.

It would be better if we could somehow just get people to understand the basic rule of packing--get the box full enough but not over-full.  It should be easy to figure this out and match a smaller clothing item with a larger stuffed animal and vice versa.  But volunteers too often don't seem to get it.

There really isn't anything more for me to do at this point.  I know I've purchased everything God put before me.  With my husband's approval and my team's consensus I even bought those extra water bottles last weekend.

Now we wait on Him to orchestrate this packing party and fill these boxes with items to bless children in His name.

So I'll quit tallying items and close my notebook.

And I'll start another tally--a list of God's promises and His history of being faithful to us in the last five packing parties.

That tally will make the first one inconsequential.