Sunday, June 24, 2018

Energy of Encouragement



Encouragement is difficult to quantify. Sometimes the smallest word can give encouragement beyond what you'd imagine, and God can bring encouragement from the most unlikely places.

Personally, this week I feel God's been giving me amazing gifts of encouragement.  It started last Monday with an encouraging one-on-one call with my Operation Christmas Child regional manager, Bill.  Later that day another boost came with a Facebook message that offered the possibility of a busload of local public high school students coming to help assemble boxes the week of our packing party. I mean, sometimes in the middle of the night I wonder how we're going to fold 30,000 boxes in four days so even the possibility of a large group to help got my heart beating faster. (Keep praying this works out.)

I wrote on Tuesday about how a couple came to my door with four boxes of beanie babies, and on Wednesday we had a terrific packing party work day.  Over 60 people from the community came out and worked together to assemble 4500 jump ropes, 2550 bags of crayons, and hundreds of packs of folded paper in bags.  When you're wondering how all the work will get done, this is a huge encouragement.  Not only that, 269 more stuffed animals were brought to the work day pushing our stuffed animal total for the week to a crazy 1,584!


On Thursday we got a call we'd been praying about for several months giving confirmation that the church that served as our Central Drop-Off Site will continue this year. Yahoo!  Praise God! Now to pray in a Central Drop-Off Team Leader.   Jim and I were blessed to have dinner that night at Presque Isle State Park on nearby Lake Erie with Steve, our friend from Samaritan's Purse donor ministries.  To know their whole staff has been praying for our need for a Central Drop-Off Site was a great encouragement.  I can't think of anything that's a greater boost than knowing that others in the Family of God are interceding for you.  You can tell in this picture we were having a great time...



Friday's yard sale safari yielded only three stuffed animals--a long way from the 1,500 we're praying for.  I was encouraged, though, as I did some cleaning and saw evidences of all God's faithfulness in answered prayer from past months and years while I filed old meeting agendas and read through notes from past Connect conferences...well, yeah, my cleaning gets derailed a lot, I'm afraid...but sometimes you need the encouragement more than the order.

I thought I'd be the only one on safari on Saturday but was encouraged with an early-morning phone call from Donna telling me she'd be on the hunt after all.  She faithfully searched and found 300 stuffed animals.  Meanwhile, I only bagged 161.

Late on Saturday afternoon I got a surprise colossal dose of encouragement with a call from my fellow-area coordinator friends, Cliff and Sheryl Hartsfield.  Turns out they were driving to Canada from Maryland and were going to be just a couple of miles from me. We made plans to meet for a quick dinner at Chick-fil-A.

It's hard not to be encouraged when you share with other OCC friends about all God is doing for your teams and in the ministry as a whole.  We talked about how most of us who are leaders in OCC aren't high-powered executive types with strong leadership skills.  Some are, but most of us are just bumbling along while we trust God to do things we never imagined He could do in us and through us. And, in our weakness He gets the glory. Wow!  It's so encouraging to know it's HIM and not us getting the job done.

Cliff and Sheryl topped it off with another surprise--they brought me 50 brand new stuffed animals to add to the week's total.  It's not easy to give to another what you really need for your own packing party, so they blessed me incredibly with this sacrificial gift.



As I left Cliff and Sheryl I headed to Pam's house for a mini work day with our team.  Only Pam, Amanda, and I were able to get together but we had some much-needed laughs while we completed (well, almost completed) about a thousand school packs for our boxes.

That brings me to this morning. Not only did I have the encouragement of receiving Donna's haul of stuffed animals that brought us to 516 for the weekend (keep praying for another 984 by Friday) but Charles the Walmart manager who attends our church approached me and asked how many boxes of crayons I want to order.  Guys, whenever someone approaches me so I don't have to make a phone call it's a glorious day!

But, wait...it gets better. We've been praying for God to enlarge our OCC team.  So there I was in the women's restroom...in a stall...when I heard the familiar voice of a newly-retired missionary call my name and tell me she wanted to talk to me.  A minute later we met at the sinks and she said, "People have been asking me what I'm going to do now that I'm retired and I'd really like to work with Operation Christmas Child." Wow!

We talked briefly and I sent her the application information this afternoon. At the risk of "poisoning the process" and falling even lower on the high-impact-scale I promise not to get too excited yet. Still, it was certainly a banner way to end an energy-filled week of encouragement.

God, you really are so good to me.

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Series of Miracles




When you think about it, life is just a series of miracles...every breath, every beat of the heart...miracles every one.

And my Operation Christmas Child life, too, has been a story of miracles.  Sometimes it's just kind of crazy how God answers prayer in the most intricate ways.

My continual prayer this year has been for God to provide enough items to adequately fill 30,000 boxes to bless 30,000 children.  I don't know what each of those things will be but I'm always keeping my eyes open for them.

For some weeks now I've had my eye on some nice fleece blankets at a local store.  I've also been doing everything I can to earn reward points to spend at that store that will allow me to get extra items for free.  A few weeks ago the price of the blankets dropped to $1.59 and I got 15 of them but by the time I had more reward points they'd raised the price of the blankets back up to $3.00.

This past Saturday I had $11.86 in points that were expiring and I also had a special coupon for $30 off a $50 purchase.  I wanted to buy a certain Fisher Price toy to take to my grandson on Sunday, so I figured I'd spend my points on that.  By God's grace, though, I found that toy (brand new and in the packaging) for $1.00 at one of the yard sales on Saturday. Miraculous.

So I headed to the store with my coupon and my points, loaded 17 blankets in my cart and took them to the service desk to check the price.  I expected them to be $3.00 and was surprised when the clerk conferred with a manager and said the price would be .79 for each blanket. Another miracle.

I hurried back and filled my cart with the 13 remaining blankets and got seven 6-packs of wiffle balls to get my total over $50 so I could use my $30 coupon. Back at the service desk the clerk began to ring up the blankets and said, "Huh, they're ringing up at .47."  I ran back and got three more packs of balls and ended up with a total of 30 blankets and 60 balls for just $22 of my free points.

Week by week we've been praying for stuffed animals and seeing God bring them to us in some miraculous ways.  I was talking to my OCC regional director yesterday about this, and he asked, "Well, how does God provide them. Does He drop them off at your door?"  Yes, sometimes He does!

This morning a couple came to my door with four boxes filled with brand new beanie babies--170 of them.  Their donation brought our total to 1,307 for this week.  We're still praying for 193 more by this Friday and waiting to see how He provides.


Just because he's so stinking cute I have to include a picture of our sweet miracle grandson, Sam.


 And because we have a God who always goes above and beyond, let me share with you the exciting news that Sam is getting two cousins in October.  Our youngest daughter is pregnant with miracle twin boys!

Just another in a long series of miracles.

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Sometimes You Know


Well, we still haven't received that last inch of snow we need to put us into first place for the snowiest winter...but you just never know.  It could still happen. God's been doing some crazy things up here in Erie.

Each week I've been posting on Facebook and asking those who read the post to join us in praying for a weekly goal for stuffed animals.

Last week we prayed for 1,000 and God blessed us with 1,093.  This week on Friday evening I gave the challenge to pray for 1,500 and now, just two days later, God's answered with 1,260 already.

Sometimes you just KNOW God is on the move.  On Saturday when I headed out on safari I left earlier than usual because one sale in my area had a starting time of 7:00 am.  That sale didn't have any animals but that listing is what got me out early and led me to be the first shopper at another sale. At that house the woman who was arranging toys on a table said, "Aren't you the lady who collects stuffed animals?"

"Yep, that's me," I answered.  Then she moved closer to me and dropped her voice to a whisper.  It seems she had four large garbage bags of stuffed toys hidden in her husband's truck.  She wanted to donate them to me but didn't want her children to know it.  So we made clandestine plans for me to drive to a spot two blocks away where I met up with her husband and transferred the bags to my van. It was all comically 'cloak and dagger' but I got 200 more beautiful animals because God put me at that particular place.

Incidentally, one of those four bags also had a baby toy I'd been trying to find for my grandson and had not been able to locate at a good price.  I mean, you can't beat free.  (Just to be clear, it's not something that would fit in a shoebox.)

When I leave one sale I always pray about where to go next.  After all, God knows where those animals are hiding.  So as I prayerfully drove away from one sale heading in the direction of another, I saw a sale that wasn't in the newspaper listing.  They had a blanket on the ground in front of the house (sometimes a place people place their stuffed animals) so I turned around and went back.  Well, they had a lot of animals priced very low.  I ended up with three bags full for only a few dollars.

By the end of the day I'd accumulated over 400 by God's grace.  My other safari hunters were blessed also, and I left church this morning with 15 more bags of animals and sorted this afternoon to get that total of 1,260.  It will be interesting to see how God brings the other 240 we're still praying in this week.

I managed to get all the animals cleared out and the house cleaned before tonight's OCC area team meeting.  Eight of us prayed and talked and prayed some more.

There's a lot up in the air right now. We're still lacking a confirmed Central Drop-Off Site for shoeboxes from our area this year.  I'm not sure where it will be but God knows we need it and I'm praying the promise of Phil. 4:19 over it.

Our team has dwindled, we lack coordinators, and I'm having a hard time keeping up with all I know I should be doing but so often lack the will to do.  And when I do actually try to accomplish something that condemning enemy loudly whispers my failures--"If you didn't procrastinate so much you wouldn't always be hurrying," or "If you'd just do the work of recruiting, selecting, equipping, and developing leaders then everything else would be EASY," because, of course "It's all your fault."

And...just like that...it's winter again in my heart.

But I'm talking truth to myself again.  Because despite my myriad of weaknesses compounded by the sin that "so easily besets me" I really do KNOW God has called me to this. And I know He is hearing my prayers and those of so many others who pray day by day for 11 million shoeboxes to be packed worldwide in 2018.

Sometimes when there's so much you don't know you just have to remember what you do know.