Praising God for answers to prayer today. Tomorrow is a scheduled work day for our upcoming packing party. Our media coordinator, Pam, has publicized this in every possible venue and our plan was to work on making jump ropes and bagging soap and crayons.
The soap was supposed to be shipped last Thursday but I haven't received any confirmation of shipping. When I tried to email my contact at Clean The World I got an out-of-office memo telling me she is in Guatemala. So...no soap. Nope.
Then on Monday I got a call from the manger at Walmart. He told me the home office dropped the ball on the ordering and the crayons weren't ordered until Monday. If they didn't miraculously arrive on Tuesday's truck they wouldn't come until Thursday night after our work day was completed. I told the manager we'd pray for the crayons to be on Tuesday's truck.
I emailed and texted team members to get prayer support. I posted our prayer need on Facebook. And on Tuesday afternoon I got the word--the crayons came! Not only that, Walmart donated $300 toward the cost. How great is our God!
This afternoon my husband (with his truck) and Pam and I (each with a minivan) met at the Walmart customer service area. The manager was not working, but he'd made arrangements with the assistant manager for the pick-up. First the assistant manager got a box of Crayola crayons to use to ring up the sale, but I explained our order was 181 cartons of Cra-Z-Art brand.
He got the right box and drafted a cashier to begin ringing the sale. She struggled to use the quantity key while the assistant manager and another associate peered over her shoulder. After several tries with the quantity key, they decided she'd ring them individually. Several minutes later she'd managed to swipe that UPC code 154 times and had another 8,534 to go. I began to wonder how many register tapes it would take to make a receipt for 8,688 items. Thankfully, they made another phone call and figured out how to use the quantity key to ring 100 items at a time. Twenty minutes later we were ready for loading.
A troop of strong male Walmart associates offered to load our three vehicles. This was a true blessing considering it's one of the hottest days of the summer with temperatures hovering around 90 degrees.
Two pallets of crayons got loaded into three vehicles in record time and we were off on the drive across town to our storage container.
Jim's truck was loaded first and he was on his way. Our community relations coordinator, Christine, met him there--coming directly from an appointment and dressed up--and jumped into service, literally. Soon Pam and I brought our loaded vehicles into the fun.
Some of the cartons were stacked in the church gym waiting for the crayons to be bagged at tomorrow's work day, and the rest now line the side wall of our storage container.
Crazy. And why did I think I would ever have room for soap?
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