Sharpening the Deal

Our Operation Christmas Child team coordinators met today and did some preliminary planning for the 2018 packing party.  I prayed hard about this meeting--wanting it to be a time of unity in making some productive decisions.

We talked about a goal for this year and decided to trust God for 30,000 boxes.  This is a big jump over last year's 28,032.  That's 2,000 more boxes to fold and 2,000 more boxes to fill with items and 2,000 more boxes for which we need to pray in the shipping funds. 

At the same time I realize we have fewer items now than we did at this point last year.  Last year in addition to the anchor items of hats and visors I already had over 10,000 nice belts and 30,000 packages of shoelaces along with nearly 3,000 nice, new, large stuffed bunnies. 

This year we have almost enough visors but are pretty lean in the filler department.  Part of the time I think God is just waiting until the weather gets better to bless us with the items He knows we need and....well, the rest of the time I just wonder. 

I do know our God is well able to supply every need if He wants us to pack 30,000 boxes.  And if He doesn't want us to pack that many then I don't want to pack them either. 

Being a bit desperate for SOME sort of filler item, I saw these pencil sharpeners from Oriental Trading.  I know the quality's not the greatest with the caps likely to keep falling off.  In the past when we used them we had to tape the dome lids on them, and I don't want to bother with that!  I generally stay away from small items that don't take up much room in the box, but I thought about putting these into plastic Easter eggs.  They'd be more useful than the small rings or stickers we often use. 

The sharpeners were listed at $2.97 for a lot of 72--over 4 cents each--which is way too much for a small item. 

So, I decided to sharpen the deal.  I found a promo code that would give me free shipping and $10 off on a $49 order.  Then I found a site where I could buy Oriental Trading gift cards at a slightly reduced price and used a special deal going on to get another $10 off.  I also went through eBates to save another $3.15. 

In the end, I got the price down to 2.9 cents each and bought 3,816 of the sharpeners.  That will at least give us a start on egg-fillers.  Now all we have to do is pray we can find the eggs in the after-Easter sales! 

Item by item we're trusting God for the deals...oh, and sharpen up your prayer skills because we're asking you to join us again to pray for 27,000 more stuffed animals...