In his book "Don't Waste Your Life" John Piper tells of a couple who retired early, moved to Florida, bought a boat, and spent all their time playing softball and collecting seashells. He calls this a tragedy--a waste of life. I agree.
But when life gets stressful my husband and I will sometimes say to one another, "The seashells sound pretty good right now." This is one of those times...
Look at this picture. Doesn't our storage container look nice and neat? We're down to the last few square feet of space left and we're still expecting another few pallets of items.
Just 21 days from now and this 2015 Community-Wide Operation Christmas Child Packing Party will be over--for better or worse. Yes, I'm trusting God for victory. Well, most moments I am.
Still, when darkness closes in I begin to think of all the details that need to be managed in the next three weeks. Actually, compared to other years we're far ahead this year when it comes to preparation of items. All the crayons and soap are bagged and we're down to probably ten more spools of rope to be made into jump ropes. That's a first. Of course, we still have 25,000 labels to put on boxes, but they won't come until the Monday before the packing party.
My biggest concern is getting volunteers there to pack the boxes and, more importantly, key volunteers in place to supervise the operation. The packing party is an Operation Christmas Child area team event, but our team isn't that large and many don't participate in the packing party at all.
Our church is large by our community's standards, and they only promote official church events. I've been able to put posters up in the rest rooms, but that's about it. So...I need to get myself busy on social media and do some promoting. And I need to get brave enough to make some more asks to get people on board. When it comes to this I feel very much alone...that's probably inaccurate but it's just the way I feel.
My husband and I spent about four hours in the car today and I leafed through a book of inspirational stories of women who've overcome obstacles--big ones. And last night we went to see the movie "War Room" that cast a vision for the work of prayer. That's another thing I need to get myself busy doing.
Because...in 21 days it'll all be over...for better or for worse.
I live north of Kansas City and have one more car load of fun items for my own 200 "GO" box packing event. So I will not be available to help in your community event. I would love to come and see how this all works. You do have a pray warrior praying for you and your community packing party. Please do not forget to make face contact with your team when asking them to work at your packing event.
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