Boxes and Bountiful Blessings

The Operation Christmas Child blessings just keep pouring in lately.  Yesterday five members from our area team drove 1.5 hours to neighboring Warren county to enjoy a "celebration meeting".  We were blessed with twenty folks from the area who are passionate about packing shoe boxes and blessing children.

We were blessed to get two new prayer partners and shared lots of ideas for how to pack more boxes and prayerfully reach for our goal of 45,000 boxes in 2015.

And, for even more blessings, rewind back to last Wednesday.  I got an unexpected text message from our church administrator that afternoon telling me a truck was there with a delivery for me.  I'd placed an order for these visors the previous Friday, but I'd had no confirmation they were even shipped.

So...I jumped in the car and drove to the church, arriving in record time.  This is what greeted me...

a TON of visors (well, 2,380 pounds to be exact)--57 cases weighing almost 42 pounds each.  Ironically, the day before we had four people to unload 700 pounds of pencils and a day later I was on my own.  But I got to work--thankful for the cartons that had those great straps on them--and had half of them stored in the container before my husband arrived to give me a hand.

We got them all safely stacked, but I am a bit chagrined to see how full that storage container is now.  At this time last year our container was still nearly empty; that was a problem.   Now we have a new problem.  Famine to feast, it's always interesting to see how God works it out every year.

This morning brought even more bountiful blessings.  My media coordinator, Pam Niedhammer, and I made the rounds to three local Kmart stores and scored 266 stuffed bunnies and chicks at 90% off--only .39 each.

And...this afternoon Leigh Fisher, my regional director, called to get confirmation on ordering our truck and supplies for the packing party on September 18 & 19.  "Why does this scare me?"  I asked her.  Every year for the past six years we've seen God provide in amazing ways, and I know this seventh year will be no different.

I get a bit of a lump in my throat, though, when I think about the work it will take to get those boxes packed and loaded on the truck.

But God is filling those boxes even now...with visors and bunnies and pencils...and boxes and boxes of bountiful blessings.