The holiday respite is over and it's time to start more concentrated strategizing for our 2018 Operation Christmas Child packing party. We don't even know when it will be yet, because we have to wait for OCC to set the shipping windows before we can plan a date.
Still, the buying has been going on for months already. See these Hello Kitty crowns? I love them, but many of the packers at our 2017 packing party had problems fitting them into the boxes. Nevertheless, I made the decision to buy 12,000 of them for this year's boxes because they are inexpensive and fun.
We pray all the time and struggle over when to buy items and when to wait for a better deal to come along. It seems like when I pray for direction I should always make the right decision, but it doesn't always work that way--at least from my limited human perspective.
Case in point--cups. In 2017 we had 10,000 plastic cups left over from 2016 and we just about used them up. When I saw a deal on them some weeks ago I prayed about whether to buy them and how many to buy. I checked with other core team members and said that since we have thousands more visors than baseball hats this year I felt we'd need more cups to fill boxes. I prayed, but maybe not enough, before I decided to purchase 4 pallets of them--about 16,000 cups. This week the price on them dropped. I could have saved $176.00 if I'd waited. Was it my mistake?
On the other hand, there were times when I delayed buying as I waited for a price to drop only to have the stock of the item deplete and lose the bargain entirely. It's hard to tell if the cups are empty or full, you know?
Then there are the washcloths. Last year there were 18-packs of washcloths on sale at holiday clearance prices at Walmart. I saw the same ones in the store this year and started praying a few weeks before Christmas about whether to buy them at 50% off right after Christmas or wait for them to be reduced to 75% off.
To my chagrin this year they were not reduced with the rest of the holiday merchandise. I waited until Walmart's prices dropped to 75% off on Christmas merchandise, prayed hard, and talked with the managers at three Walmart stores. I explained they said "holiday" beside the UPC code and had been reduced with the Christmas merchandise in 2017. Two stores reduced them to 75% off for me and the other store reduced them by 50%. God provided 1,476 washcloths for an average of .08 each. That day my cup was definitely full.
Meanwhile, a donor from our team purchased our pens at what we hope was a good price. We're still praying for a good deal on pencils and all the filler items we will need.
The stuffed animal count stands at about 2,500--fewer than last year at this point. The team member who stored many of them in her home last year is no longer on our team so they're stuck on the floor of the storage container for now--that cup is kind of half-full.
It's overwhelming to think how many items we need to make boxes good enough and full enough to bless children.
We know, though, that we serve a God who fills our cups to overflowing--no matter how they appear to us. So we'll keep praying and waiting to be filled.
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