It's Urgent but He's Enough

I just finished an Operation Christmas Child learning module about "Leading With Urgency". The thing about serving the Lord is that you can never do enough. There are always more to be reached--2 billion children in the world under age 15, for example.

Yet, on the other hand, when we're yoked with Christ He is enough. The balance is to prayerfully ask Him what He wants me and our OCC team to do each day, each month, each year.

So as I listened to this teaching with its exhortation to be flexible, continuously seek improvement, and be entrepreneurial I was doing some self-evaluation. Our team spends a lot of time planning, praying and executing by God's grace a major community-wide packing party. And...to be honest...I spend a lot of time wondering if that's what God really wants us to do. I mean, it's not at all part of the high-impact OCC process.

Still, as I look at the gifts and passions of our team members I see how they love to pack shoeboxes. From the time I was a young child I loved to hunt for bargains, and while this is not a spiritual gift (unless you loosely group it in the category of 'helps') it's both a skill and a passion of mine and of a number of our team members.

I feel God has gifted us with skills and resources to do this annual packing party and it's by His grace and good pleasure that it's grown year by year.

This year we are practicing flexibility as we just got the official word this week that we'll be packing the newer larger corrugated boxes this year. With 25% more space to fill we're praying again over our goal. We did get permission from the church that allows us to use their facilities for the packing party to put five trucks in their parking lot instead of the four we've had for the past few years. With five trucks and putting 16 boxes in each carton (as opposed to the 23 we've been able to put in each carton previously) we figure we could do 27,000 boxes.  But...can we adequately fill that many?

Meanwhile we had our second packing party work day this week. We had 20+ volunteers throughout the day and assembled nearly 2,000 jump ropes (only 23,600 more to go!) and a LOT of school packs. AND a couple came who said they want to investigate serving as year-round volunteers!

Last Saturday we hosted a display table (pictured above) at our local Christian radio station's Women's Conference and made some good connections. Six new prayer partners committed to pray for OCC.

We're praying and investigating item options for this year's boxes.  We're going to ask God to help us be flexible, continuously improving, and entrepreneurial. We're asking God to show us what His will is for our team's packing party in 2019.

Because, in the end, God knows the true urgency of His mission and when He gave that mission He also gave the best promise ever, "I am with you always."

And THAT is enough!

A-maz-ing Grace

At our last meeting we studied God's goodness and challenged our OCC team to read this verse every day.  Psalm 84:11 "For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly."

It's crazy to think the God of the universe wants to bless me and you, but it's true.

This week I saw His grace in a unique answer to prayer. Before I went to visit my daughter Julie and her family in Chicago last weekend I prayed that I'd be able to bless her in some way.  While I was there she was telling me about a Little Tikes toy they have at the physical therapy office where she takes our little grandson. The therapist uses the sounds of the toy to encourage him to turn his head and loosen the muscles in his neck.

Julie wanted to buy this toy, but the therapist said, "Oh, that's probably eight years old. I doubt you can find it now."  I asked Julie to describe it to me but not having actually seen it I couldn't really picture what it looked like.  While I was there I did an Internet search and checked eBay all to no avail.

Fast forward a few days to this Wednesday when I went to a local thrift store in search of stuffed animals. When my animal hunt was over I browsed the few toys on the shelf and found this one. It was a Little Tikes toy and it had various sounds. Could this be the one?  Well, it had a .50 price tag but toys were "Buy One Get One Free" so I picked up another toy and got them both for .50.

When I got home I texted this picture to my daughter and asked, "Is this by any chance the toy they have at physical therapy?"

A few minutes later I got the reply, "Yes!! How did you do that?!"

I didn't do that. It was an answer to prayer. Another example of God's A-MAZ-ING grace. Today I put the toy in the mail and hope it will be a blessing. It's sure a reminder to me of God's goodness. Oh, and by the way I checked the other toy I picked up and found out it sells on Amazon for $39.99.

A-maz-ing

Future Me

Can you believe it's been almost six weeks since I updated this blog! Well, my little grandson can't believe it either but it's true.

I've spent a lot of time in those weeks praying for truck deliveries of shoebox items that were coming in our unpredictable winter weather. Because unloading pallets in the middle of a winter snowstorm is just no fun at all.

But by God's grace our prayers were answered and we received three deliveries in the past few weeks with no problems.

First came 149 spools of rope that will allow us to assemble 25,600 jump ropes --

Then we got two more deliveries of assorted shoebox filler items. One of those deliveries went to a local manufacturing plant that donated some much-needed storage space to us. I can't tell you how exciting it was to have them sent directly to a warehouse with a loading dock and not have to hand unload all those pallets. Of course eventually we'll have to get them moved to the packing party site but we can figure that out later.

Speaking of the packing party, we still don't know when the available shipping windows will be so we don't have a date.  And we don't know what size boxes we will be receiving--the older style of GO boxes or the newer corrugated ones--so we don't have a goal. I know people are praying, though, because I have a peace in knowing that God is in control.

I could see the results of that peace today when I received an unexpected email from FutureMe.org.  Five years ago I wrote a letter to myself to be delivered in five years through this site.  I forgot all about it and was surprised to receive it today.  This is what I wrote on March 10, 2014 --

Dear FutureMe,

In 2019 will I still be packing Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes? I just returned from the OCC Connect Conference and have grave doubts about whether I should even be an AC or doing a large packing party. I don't have many items this year yet, which is unusual. And at Connect they made a big push to get $7.00 per box for shipping. I feel like such a failure and that I don't do anything right. Maybe it's God's way of trying to keep my pride at bay, but I seem to be a failure in most areas. It's good I am retiring this year because I'm not successful in school nursing. I'm not successful at leadership. I'm not successful as a wife and mother or with extended family. So many questions. I am just tired.

When I read this today I smiled, because--again by God's grace--I don't feel that angst right now. At least not today.  A lot of things haven't changed. My team is even smaller than it was in 2014. I still struggle with leadership and no, even though I pray for it I have never actually seen the whole $9 per box shipping donation. Still, I know God is in control and I know today He's called me to this place in His body and He will have to be the one to do His work in me.

Still, there's so much more I could and should be doing. And as I think toward the future I know we DO need to prayerfully add more team members, especially some younger ones.

To that end I spent a delightful hour last week with the Kindergarten and Pre-K students at Leadership Christian Academy.  These sweet kids work on projects for OCC every month at their monthly service day. This month they were making bookmarks and bracelets. Then in November they will pack boxes. I presented each of them with an OCC t-shirt and talked about how they could be ambassadors (admittedly a big word for Kindergarteners) for OCC.

Maybe one of them will be my future me.

Meanwhile, our team has adopted a new motto for 2019 that I found in my reading in Numbers one morning:  Numbers 11:23 "Is the LORD'S arm too short?"

We know that His arm is NOT too short and our little team is putting our trust in that this year. So our media support person, Pam, made these magnets for each of us. It features a picture she took on her trip to Israel of the Promised Land as seen from Mt. Nebo.

Like the old song says, I don't know what the future holds but I know WHO holds the future...

**PS--If you'd like to write a letter that will be emailed to you in 1, 3, or 5 years you can do that at FutureMe.org