Generally Blessed

Today was one of the days I wait for--90% off at Dollar General on summer clothes and shoes. I made it to 8 stores today and was blessed with 444 clothing items for Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. Now I'm sorting and bagging the bounty.

For the first year that I can remember, I don't really need these items to meet my goal of packed boxes for the current year so I'm trying to decide where to store them.

Should I start taking stuff to the loft at Grace Church in hopes of having another giant shoe box packing party next year? Should I take it to the basement of Wesley Church and keep packing boxes throughout the year?

In the midst of these questions I've been doing a lot of speaking for OCC. Last night I was in Albion to speak to the Lions Club's auxiliary and ended up getting lost in the country. I hate country roads--especially at night. They're so creepy and dark and lonely. By God's grace I didn't get attacked by an ax murderer but it felt like I might. Tomorrow I'm headed back into the country again--down to Seneca, PA. Sunday before last I was in Guys Mills (country again) and this Sunday I'm off to Clintonville--which I'm SURE is in the country. Creepy. But I'll drive to the ends of the earth (or at least what seems like it) to beg for more shoe boxes to be packed.

Enough of this. I'm off to sort sandals and think about how to inspire country folks to pack more shoe boxes.

I really am Generally blessed.

A Great Number

My Bible reading yesterday took me to the first chapter of Numbers where I was reading about the census God commanded them to take of all the men over the age of 20 who could fight for Israel. When I got to verse 46 I read, "The total number was 603,550."

It just made me stop and think of what a perfect total number of Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes that would be for the Mid-Atlantic region this year. We've all been praying for the goal of 600,000 anyway--so why not up it to 603,550? What a great biblical number. Just think of 603,550 gospel opportunities touching 603,550 children who could then fight to take the gospel to others. Of course I had to grab my calculator to check and I found it's just a little over a 15% increase over last year's Mid-Atlantic total.

Also, I noticed how the numbers in Numbers chapter 1 are counted as a total from those of individual tribes just as ours will be a total from area teams--we'll have our own little paraphrase of this chapter. It gave me a new appreciation for the idea of all those numbers in the Bible.

Just thought I'd share that I have a new prayer goal--603,550.

He Did It!

I am amazed at all God has done. A week ago all the items to pack the shoe boxes were still in the loft area at Grace Church or in the basement at Wesley Church. Now, just seven days later, they're all packed into shoe boxes and ready to be transported to children around the world.

Last night I wrote about how I tossed in bed crying out for God to do what only He could do.

And today He did it!

The packing started a bit after 9:00 am and by 1:00 pm we were past the 5,000 goal. Streams of volunteers--around 150 of them--piled items into boxes as I prowled the perimeter and tried to stay out of the chaos. If there were complaints, I didn't hear them. God likely closed my ears to keep my sanity. I only spent a few minutes in a corner of a dark room praying about whether to send my husband on a one-hour trip to pick up more notebooks from our old church where some of the supplies were stored.

Interesting about the supplies--the toothpaste I thought we'd never run out of because I had so much extra was the first thing to deplete. Well, right after the pencils. We started to divide the 24-packs of crayons into bags of 8 to make them stretch and then ended up with extra. And the clothing items? By my count we didn't have enough to do 5,000 boxes but we ended up packing 5,577 and still had some left over. Unexplainable. The notebooks I sent my husband to get weren't really needed in the end but the bagged candy he got there was.

After the packing party was over, Heather, Elizabeth, Kristin and I went back to Wesley Church and packed another 126 boxes to bring the total there to 4,126. We'll meet there tomorrow at 2:00 pm and hopefully have enough volunteers to move those boxes upstairs, cartonize them, and truck them to Grace Church to put them on the semi.

5,577 plus 4,126 plus 318 boxes brought in by individuals at Grace Church= 10,021 boxes to put on the truck so far. Why did I have those moments of doubt in the night?

Only You, God. Only You.

Commit Your Way

I've been tossing in bed on this eve of the giant packing party. Sleep eludes me. Earlier this evening I was feeling excitement but now I feel like a condemned prisoner--no turning back.

I wish I could just stand on a balcony and watch the packing party happen instead of having to be in the middle of the chaos and deal with questions and complaints and feel my lack of leadership skills slapping me over and over again.

As we worked today to organize items on tables, all I could think was that it just doesn't look like enough to nicely fill 5,000 boxes. I know I have the basics but there just aren't enough filler items and the stacks of stuffed animals look slim.

Jesus, take what we have just like you took that little boy's lunch so many centuries ago and multiply it. Make it last. Make it fill the corners of those boxes. Make it bless children in Your name. Give us baskets left over.

I've been clinging to Psalm 37:5 that promises, "Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him and He will do this."

Do it, Lord, or it won't be done.

Sufficient

'sufficient' is sort of an antiquated word. We don't use it all that much anymore except in the context of 'self-sufficient'--being able to take care of yourself. I'm not feeling self-sufficient right now. Not hardly.

I should be sleeping. But I'm not. I'm thinking. I'm not worrying, mind you, I'm just thinking. My thoughts bounce around from anticipation to consternation when I think about this giant packing party for Operation Christmas Child on September 26th and realize it will all be over in three weeks. We're asking God to let us pack 5,000 gift-filled boxes in one day for needy children around the world. Will I be sorry that I didn't do more to prepare?

I've been doing an inventory of items for the boxes and calculating what we could run out of first. I think we need more than another 1,500 stuffed animals. From where will they appear?

I bought and hauled another 1,176 notebooks from Target in the last two days. Will we have enough?

It's all still pretty much a mystery. Some of the details are coming together but a lot remains undecided and uncharted. As I tossed in bed minutes ago, Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 12:9 kept running through my head. Paul said that God told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." I don't know how God told him that, but Paul writes it as a quote from God and he passed it on to us.

God says His grace is sufficient and an online definition of 'sufficient' is "as much as is needed." I've sure got the weakness to make His power show up for the perfection it is and He's got the sufficient grace to meet every need. By the time September 27th comes around and the semi trailer's loaded with thousands of boxes and ready to roll this will all be just another story of God's sufficiency.

Sufficient. Yeah, it's gonna be more than okay.

If...

It’s amazing what can happen when you inspire a lot of people to even a little involvement. I’ve been reading about the building of the Tabernacle in Exodus , and I was struck by the fact that the people gave over 3¾ tons of silver for its construction.

But I was even more dumbfounded when I read Exodus 38:26 and realized that each person over the age of 20 gave only 1/5^th of an ounce of silver. I’ve wondered at times if God is pleased with the concept of megachurches. It seems, though, that the Israelites were the original megachurch—a couple million strong. Each person gave this tiny amount and they ended up with a mountain of silver.

I think of how this applies to Operation Christmas Child and I realize anew how important it is to spread the vision for this ministry to as many churches and individuals as possible.

If we could get only 180 churches to each contribute 100 gift-filled shoe boxes from their congregation, we’d easily reach our goal of 18,000 boxes from Northwestern PA. And if we got 1,000 churches from each of the 50 states to pack 100 boxes each, we’d have 5 million—very close to our goal of 5.2 million boxes nationwide. Hey, Texas does things in a big way, so we’ll get them to pack an extra 200,001 to put us over the top.

And if I could get 1,000 people to each buy 10 boxes of crayons—well, I’d have 10,000 boxes with no sweat.

If…

3/4 Ton Waxed Me Out

I spend a lot of time praying for things like crayons for my Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes and last week I got an answer. Last Sunday K-Mart advertised their 24-packs of Crayola crayons for a sale price of 20 cents, so I talked with a Wal-Mart manager on Monday and he agreed to match the K-Mart sale price and order me 6,000 boxes of crayons. I was ecstatic and prayed all week that the crayons would arrive by the end of the week during the time of the sale.

On Friday the call from Wal-Mart came right on schedule and I drove my Dodge Caravan to pick up my precious bundles of joy--all 119 cartons of them. It took longer than I expected to pay for them and load them into my car, but I was rejoicing that they all fit!

I was on my way to a funeral that started at 11:00 AM and I left the Peach St. Wal-Mart parking lot at 10:50 to make the drive to West 12th and Asbury--probably a normal 20 minute drive. I was proud that I was only 2 minutes late for the start of the funeral but I did wonder why my car sounded a little funny.

After the service I drove home, and my husband arrived a few minutes after I did and burst into the house yelling, "When are you gonna get those crayons out of the car!" My confusion must have showed, because he went on to 'explain' (kinda loudly) that the rear end of the car was only six inches off the ground and he thought my tires looked flat.

So we unloaded part of the crayons into his truck. Then he and my daughter Jen drove both vehicles to Grace Church where we carried the cartons up two flights of stairs to a loft for storage. Oh, there was also a wall at the top of the stairs to lift them over. Actually Jim and I did the stairs--25 trips or so up and down for each of us carrying 2 cartons per trip--and handed the cargo to Jen to carry across the loft and stack. There was a lot of sweat flowing.

Jim later weighed a carton (14.5 pounds) and after doing the math he found that the total weight was in excess of 3/4 ton. No wonder the car was dragging.

I'm praising God but right now I'm waxed out.