Wednesday Wins

Wow--I just realized I took no new pictures today.  Ah, well, all those boxes kind of start to look the same after a while anyway.

I was blessed this morning to have some dear OCC friends call to pray with me over the phone.  God has given me so many great people to share this journey with and their texts and emails and prayers hold me up just as surely as Aaron and Hur supported Moses's arms in Exodus 17.

The morning started early when we crammed two roomfuls of stuffed animals from my spare bedrooms into our minivan and my husband's truck. Then Jim took off to meet another team member, grab a borrowed box truck, and head to pick up 12,000 stuffed animals stored in a basement.

I headed to the church to begin the folding.  After getting everyone started I shared the verse God gave me this morning in 1 Chronicles 5:20 "all who were with them were given into their hand; for they cried out to God in battle, and He answered their prayers because they trusted in Him." It was amazing to find this encouragement in the middle of a chapter filled with genealogy.  After sharing this verse with the group I invited anyone who wanted to come to join me in our second "Jericho march" to walk around the outside of the church and pray.  Each year I try to march in prayer six times around the church and then do a seventh march on the morning of the packing party.

My good friend and prayer partner took me up on the offer and we had a powerful time of prayer that brought sweet assurance of God's presence.

We continued folding boxes with about 10 people there off and on through the day.  This crew could really turn out the boxes and we quickly filled both sides of the rest of the hall (it held 6,012 boxes) and had to move to putting the boxes in the church worship center.

Meanwhile, Jim and Myron took the box truck out to Myron's house to pick up a truckful of plastic tubs filled with completed jump ropes they'd been storing.

The crowd thinned out by dinner time, but we were gifted by one of the church's Life Groups who came and brought us dinner then stayed to fold boxes.

Another Life Group brought us lunch day before yesterday, and I realized how much better everyone feels after eating a good meal.  The gifts of those meals contributed greatly to the atmosphere and made volunteering more joyous.  It was a good lesson to me and helped me realize I need to pray about my lack of attention when it comes to food.

Again, a larger crowd appeared for the evening and we fell into a good rhythm.  Each volunteer seemed to find a niche where they worked well.  Some of the children loved stacking the boxes, some enjoyed carrying, and others specialized in labeling the boxes for folding.

Working together, we ended the evening at 9:00 with a total of 10, 665 boxes folded.

Praising God for a Wednesday full of wins!