Merry-Go-Round Musings

This summer's gone so fast it feels like one turn on the merry-go-round. Five weeks from right now, Lord willing, our 9th Operation Christmas Child packing party will be history and four trucks with 27,000+ boxes will be well-filled and waiting to be pulled.

Lord willing.

The details are starting to niggle away at me at night now.  It always happens--even though I know our sovereign God will make this packing party a reality again.  He always does.

But at this point it's all faith--not sight.  We don't know who the volunteers will be or how many will be there.  We know we'll have to fold boxes this year so more volunteers will be needed to accomplish that task.  Although, I just heard of a packing party this weekend that was sent the easy-open yellow boxes we've used before.  So...chalk that up to the 'who knows' category.

But as I remember past packing parties I know God's accomplished the task in even tougher situations. Most of those years I was working full-time and two of those packing parties fell within a week or two of my daughters' weddings.

We just had another successful packing party work day this Thursday and have one more scheduled in two weeks.  We're on track to have all the prep work completed before packing party week--something that's never happened before.

There are plenty of questions still waiting for answers -- when will we be able to unload the storage container?  When can we schedule work days the week of the packing party for box folding and set-up?  Will we have anyone to run sound for our opening before we begin packing on Saturday?  And, since I just found out these tags need to be removed...how/when will we cut them off the 2,880 bunnies that are buried in the back of the storage container.  Well...we have 34 days to figure it out.

God has been answering prayer and bringing in lots of adorable stuffed animals. Last week He provided 1,070.  I've been sorting and washing them nearly every day.  The living room carpet isn't clear for long.

I did have two offers this week to purchase new stuffed animals for .50 each--I turned them down.  I try to stay at a price point of .25 for each stuffed animal.  I added up the totals of the ones I've obtained myself in the past year and it came to 4,555 at an average cost of 14.5 cents.  Besides, though collecting them this way takes lots of prayer and travel and time, it does involve a lot more people and it also yields a diverse group of stuffed animals of different sizes that keep the boxes from being "cookie cutter" look-alikes and help fill out the space better.

I'm committed to safari expeditions--at least for the foreseeable future.  You never know what God will do next.

I did a tally last Monday of all our clothing/anchor and filler items and our core team strategized before Monday night's area team.  We decided we'll use thousands of extra clothing items that are on the small side (socks, gloves, underwear, and hats) to augment the other filler items.  By God's grace I pray our boxes will be better quality than ever.

Well, when the merry-go-round stops in five weeks we'll find out.