Getting The Point

This is what happens in January and February. I have fantasies of quitting. I lie in bed in the wee hours and think to myself...I'm a volunteer. Nothing says I have to keep doing this job as area coordinator. No one is making my team plan a large shoebox packing party. Really, the sensible thing would be to just quit.

But then, like Reb Tevye in "Fiddler On The Roof" I think..."On the other hand"...  Neither I nor my teammates may get paid for our jobs BUT we have a high calling. If God's still calling me to this I can't quit. I don't dare.

This leads to more prayer and soul searching as I ask God again for His wisdom. Are you calling me to this OCC team? Still? Are you calling us to do a large packing party? Still?

Because if He calls then He'll provide--that I DO KNOW. It's just that things always get a little fuzzy in these bleak months of January and February.

On the other hand...God is already providing. I've been praying for pencils this year. We have 9,000 sets of mechanical pencils donated by a generous team member but we still need about 40,000 more regular pencils and I don't have a source right now.

This week, though, I saw a post about some toys at Walgreens being 90% off. I headed to the Walgreens that's less than a mile from my house. I didn't find any toys but I DID see a rack of discounted pencils. Each pack had 20 pencils for a clearance price of .49.  I loaded them into my cart and went to find a manager to ask if I could get a cheaper price if I bought them all.  The answer to that was "no"...

BUT when they rang up it turns out the school supplies were "Buy 1 get 1 50% off" this week so each pack ended up being 36.5 cents each or about 1.9 cents per pencil.  I try not to pay more than 2 cents for a pencil so that worked out great. I headed to another store later and between the two sites I got a haul of 3,740 pencils.

I have no idea yet what our goal will be for this year's packing party. A lot will depend on what size boxes we'll be given to pack this year and I don't even know when I will know the answer to that question.

I guess the point is I need to follow God one step at a time.  I mean, that's always the point...it's just that sometimes I have trouble even seeing the next step, you know?

I'm still praying for another 36,260 pencils (and a Prayer Ministry Coordinator, and a Community Relations Coordinator, and a Central Drop-Off Team Leader and Central Drop-Off Site and another ten team members would be nice.)

But mostly I'm praying I'll just get the point.