This summer has been a wild ride and I'm starting to feel like I need a vacation. It would be nice to go somewhere for even a few days and shut down for a while.
I firmly believe God equips us with all the time and energy we need to do His will...so if I can't keep up I'm either not abiding in Him and relying on His strength or I'm doing things He hasn't called me to do. On the other hand, I know there are hard seasons that come when we're called to serve beyond normal capacity for a time. Maybe this is one of those seasons.
Our packing party is 55 days away and God is meeting needs day by day. We've been asking God to give us 1,000 stuffed animals each week. Week before last He blessed us with 681 and last week with 563. We still need 9,000 by September 23rd.
Somehow we managed to cram our Operation Christmas Child schedule from July into the beginning of August. Since the beginning of the month we've crammed in a prayer team meeting, a packing party team meeting, our logistics training and team family picnic, two long packing party work days, and one project leader workshop. Whew! Next Sunday we're set for another project leader workshop followed two days later by a stuffed animal drive at Chick-fil-A.
Last Monday we were blessed to receive our prayed-for crayons and loaded and hauled 188 cartons of crayons to our storage container. On Thursday we had 35 people at our work day who whipped out 7,344 bags of crayons and 2,250 packets of paper. The paper is finished! Now we just have 20,000 more bags of crayons and about 6,000 jump ropes to finish before September so we can concentrate on folding boxes the week of the packing party.
The one-after-another OCC events, sandwiched with a few other major volunteer gigs, have felt a bit overwhelming. This morning I griped on Facebook that most of the things I do these days seem to be things I don't really want to do and long to see in the rearview mirror. My mother would say, "Don't wish your life away." And she would be right.
In the midst of this hopefully not never-ending merry-go-round, we are praying for multiplication--for God to take these little events and make them monumental for His kingdom.
We're praying for 54,321 boxes this year in our area and today I reminded some project leaders that if each of our 200 participating churches and groups would prayerfully pack 20 more shoeboxes God would take us to that goal.
I don't know how the multiplication will happen, but we're trusting God to give us the victory as we pray. We got four new prayer partners signed up today--and that's a win!
Multiplying--even on the merry-go-round.
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