Packing Party Problems

Today we were back at the church this morning to set up for tonight's Operation Christmas Child youth packing party.  My husband was set to camp out at the church as he waited for the trailer to be delivered and for a large truck delivery of 10,500 water bottles I ordered two weeks ago.

After a bit of set-up work, Linda and Pam (my team's prayer coordinator and media coordinator) and I decided to do a Jericho prayer walk.  We walked around the church property seven times while we prayed for all the aspects of the packing party and claimed God's victory.

After praying, the challenges started.  First we got a call from the dispatcher for the OCC trailer who confessed he'd forgotten to order the truck to be dropped today.  He's a sweet brother in Christ who made calls and arranged to get it dropped tomorrow morning and then prayed over the phone with me for our packing party.

Then I checked the tracking info on the order of water bottles and discovered they aren't scheduled to be delivered until next Monday--two days after the packing party.  I spent two hours trying to reach someone in the company's customer service department and when I finally reached them they told me I needed to fill out an online form.

I know this is not a surprise to God but I'm not sure yet what kind of good He's going to bring out of this.  We're still short over 6,000 stuffed animals and the water bottles were planned to fill in that lack.

As soon as the packing party started tonight it began to rain in earnest making it a wet trek for the guys trying to load the truck tonight (the truck that is still placed in the wrong spot because no driver arrived to move it today.)

We had fewer youth there for this year's packing party and we ended the evening with 4,000 boxes in the truck (compared to 6,917 at this time last year.)

Maybe God has plans for us to do fewer boxes this year?

I took great care to be sure we had sufficient truck space and cartons this year.  Will we now not fill those cartons and that space?

I looked forward to packing at least 22,011 boxes to get to that 100,000 goal tomorrow.  Maybe God is telling me not to focus on the number of boxes--even though each of them represents a child waiting to know God's love.

And maybe God has someone planned to walk in tomorrow with a donation of 7,000 stuffed animals.  Or a miracle delivery.

Maybe....