Not gonna lie--I've struggled a lot over the years to build my team since I became area coordinator for Operation Christmas Child here in northwestern PA in 2007.
But right now, in this week, I feel God has opened a window of heaven to pour out blessings on us.
I wrote last Friday about how the sun shone through for our truck delivery on Friday. That was a true blessing because on Saturday it was back to rain all day. I was able to go to a few yard sales on Saturday morning and got 55 stuffed animals before I had to head out of town for a baby shower (appropriate weather for a shower, eh?)
On my way back home I stopped at a Children's Place outlet and scored 13 pairs of adorable flip-flops on sale for .99 each--
and I stopped to pick up my Fed Ex packages also and got a shipment of 240 boxes of cute princess bandages for shoeboxes.
Saturday's best blessing, though, came that evening. A friend who is also on our OCC area team hosted an open house for visiting missionaries. While there, I was talking with a staff member from our church about my need for more storage for our shoebox items. I've been praying about this for some time now. Well...he and his wife own a rental property that has a garage, and they offered to let us store our overflow there. What a wonderful answer to prayer!
On Sunday the weather was--rainy--again. But I was excited at church to find bags of stuffed animals had been left at the welcome center. I found the donor. She was beaming with smiles as she told of visiting yard sales on Saturday (the ones I'd missed by leaving town) and getting a haul of animals. Some people already had their animals set aside and were just waiting for someone to come by and pick them up for Operation Christmas Child. What a blessing it was for Donna to obey the Lord and go to garage sales in the rain.
Today was a sunny Monday and the blessings just kept coming. The picture at the top of this blog shows the dear group of women who are part of the Women's Connection ministry at our Erie City Mission. We had an Operation Christmas Child packing party today and they completed 101 boxes to bless children around the world. I know God will use those special boxes in a mighty way for His purpose.
The afternoon was filled with sorting leftover packing party items as well as enjoying a great phone call with my OCC regional director Leigh Fisher.
The fun wasn't over yet as I had dinner with my two new co-Network Coordinators and spent some time doing training with them. We've been praying for God to fill this position for years so it's almost surreal to see all those prayers answered.
Then I got a call from Jane Dennington, former missionary to Haiti and a member of our church relations team. Jane is the missionary speaker this week at a Bible camp. Today she spoke to 200 children and parents about OCC and was able to send home materials to five new prospective churches. She also connected with camp counselors who are college students and want to pursue involvement with OCC and one adult who's interested in volunteering on our area team.
I can hardly wait to wake up and see what God does tomorrow.
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