Set-Up Commences

I need to get better about taking pictures of what's actually happening but I always seem to be too busy to think about it. Yesterday was our first day of set-up for our Operation Christmas Child packing party.

My husband met the truck in the morning and got the 6 pallets containing 160 cartons of flat shoeboxes and 720 cartons placed in the church Commons area. On a sad note, I found out last night that he didn't get the labels and tape that were supposed to be delivered at the same time. I really, really need those labels so I'm praying he finds them when he calls the trucking company today.

Last night Jeff Pinto and I moved all 160 cartons of boxes (weighing maybe 30 pounds each) from the Commons area to the youth rooms behind the gym. I used muscles I forgot I had and got a good workout. Not sore this morning, though, by God's grace.

Meanwhile, we had about 5 other volunteers opening cartons of coloring books, pens, pencils, etc. and we amassed a large amount of cardboard already.

Then 3 of us worked on assembling boxes. The GO boxes look so different in plain white. We said they looked like doughnut boxes and it felt like we were working in a bakery. We got 300 boxes assembled. A long way from the 5000 I'm hoping to have ready by Saturday before the party begins--but it's a start. Finding space to put them is a challenge, too.

This morning I read in Isaiah 37:36 "Then the Lord went out and put to dath a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies." God can have the victory without us--even while we're asleep.

Part of me wanted to wake up this morning and hear that God had packed all of those boxes while I was asleep. But part of me is glad that He's waiting until Saturday to move through US to get the victory.

What a joy to watch it happen again!

Empty Ark

The ark is empty! Yep, this is pretty much what our storage container looks like now. God provided a 'just right' number of volunteers who worked tirelessly for more than an hour to unload a 40 ft. long space crammed with boxes of supplies and bags of animals for our Operation Christmas Child packing party. And a donation of Beanie Babies today put us over the 16,000 mark for stuffed animals.

Someone on Facebook wanted to know what 16,000 stuffed animals look like. Well, right now they look like a mountain of garbage bags and we'll just unload them one at a time so we'll never really see all 16,000 at one time.

There were some glitches today. I found out we still need a volunteer to run sound for our speaker at the packing party, the event isn't listed on the church's website calendar, and we weren't scheduled to use the worship center. Ah, well--just more communications problems--but it will all work out, I know.

On the positive side, we had good coverage with a nice-sized article about the event in Saturday's paper and another blurb in the editorial section. We're praying that God will bring the volunteers He wants to have there.

So now the countdown begins. Every evening this week we'll be working to set up for the packing party on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the animals are glad to be out of the ark and waiting patiently for the next leg of their journey.

Paper Plus

It seems our lives are often littered with paper, but for a child in a third or fourth world country paper is often a treasure. I remember Lejla Allison describing how she used a notebook for several years as a child in Bosnia by erasing the pages with a rubber band wrapped around a stick, so I always try to put some type of paper in each box we pack for Operation Christmas Child.

This year I've been challenging people to buy reams or cases of filler paper and we're getting volunteers to count out and staple packets of paper. Notebooks are preferable, but in the volume we do it's been hard to find enough of them at a good price.

When it comes to providing things for these precious boxes, I love how God amazes and amuses me all at the same time. Two weeks ago I got a hot tip on buying composition notebooks online at WalMart. The deal was for 40 cents for a 5-pack of notebooks--only 8 cents each. I was able to place an online order for 103 5-packs at one WalMart and 125 at another. But when I went to pick them up I got nothing but frustration and hassle. They wouldn't honor my order and I left without any notebooks, chalking it up to the "if it sounds too good to be true..." axiom.

Fast forward to this week when Target discounted their school supplies to 75% off. On Wednesday I got a tip from a Facebook friend and cruised up to Target to get 384 spiral-bound notebooks for only 5 cents each. While I was loading my cart I noticed they had shelves full of composition books priced at 10 cents each. Too pricey for me, but if they ever came down to 90% off they'd be 4 cents each and I'd be able to scarf up a great deal.

On Thursday I stopped at Target again to get items that were 70-75% off on the Dollar Spot area and I checked again on the composition books--still 10 cents.

This morning I went in and found the shelves of school supplies empty. Horrified, I scurried to find a manager. First contact called by the service desk was Heather, the front end manager. She said they were probably salvaged out and given to charity. With uncharacteristic boldness I asked her how I could get our charity on that list.

That brought a call to Jim, the manager. He said school supplies wouldn't be salvaged but kept until they were sold. He said they must have been moved somewhere else in the store and if I could find them he'd give me a great deal on them. The hunt was on!

I checked the stationery end caps, but no luck. Then I returned to the seasonal area and found a helpful worker who pointed me to the very back aisle of the store and there they were in all their beautiful lined glory.

Back to the front of the store where I found Jim and inquired about the price. "Well," he started, "they're 10 cents now so how about 5 cents?" I had that 90% off figure in my mind, so I countered "How about 4 cents?" He shrugged and agreed.

The ensuing hassle of dragging two flats of them to the front of the store was compounded when they decided they had to separate them by upc number. In the end I offered to come back when they had it all figured out.

Four hours later they called and I and my dutiful husband went to retrieve the bounty. Two vehicles filled with 2,902 composition books with covers flexible enough to bend and fit into a shoebox for a grand total of $116.08.

The best part is that the faculty at Belle Valley school is designating their Jeans Day money for Operation Christmas Child this week and that should almost cover the cost.

Just think--2,902 kids will have a notebook for school. And I'm so glad God foiled the previous deal at WalMart. That's just a plus.

Ark Advances

I can't believe that two weeks from now our packing party will be history. Last night I couldn't go to sleep again--both excited and thinking of details. All the animals for the ark are still resting in the bedrooms--all 47 bags of them--so at 2:30 am I decided to sort them out to see how many animals we had for boys and how many for girls.

I hauled all the bags off the beds and put the ones for boys--all 29 of them-- in the living room and then counted the 12 for girls and the 6 for 2-4 year olds.

I got them all added to the previous total and we have.....14,400 including the ones already in the ark. There are 1,000 stored in the home of another team member, bringing our grand total to 15,400. I still have about another 100 in the process of being washed and/or drying so that means I just need another 500 to get to 16,000 and be sure to have enough.

Today brought another chore. I bought 2,000 pencils that don't have erasers because they were the cheapest I could find at a wholesale company. I had hundreds of pencil top erasers so today I counted the erasers out by hundreds and put them on the pencils.

Here's what I can't figure out--my shipping order of pencils included 14 boxes that were marked to hold one gross each. The total should have been 2,016. But I counted out 1,900 pencils and put erasers on them and I still have 3 and 1/2 boxes of a gross each left. I've counted several times and I can't figure out why I have so many left over.

I guess God is starting the multiplication process early.

What Joy!

Yesterday evening I was exhausted at 6:00 and couldn't wait for an acceptable time to fall into bed. Then a few hours later I was lying in bed at midnight wide awake thinking about our upcoming Operation Christmas Child packing party.

Instead of my usual nighttime thoughts of dread and fear and obsessing over details, though, I was filled with such amazing excitement. And I woke up in that same excitement this morning. I'm not sure if this is the result of someone's prayers or just God's abundant grace (not that HIs grace could ever be 'just' anything). I feel like I've been given a gift to see His goodness in a new way and I want to hang onto this sense of wonder.

I think back to 2005 when the small OCC team at my former church tried to have a packing party. We sent notices to surrounding churches and we planned and prepared for weeks.. When the day came only about 15 people showed up. We packed around 600 boxes that day, mostly through the work of the few people on the team. If you'd told any of us that one day we'd be planning to pack 15,000 boxes in one day I don't think one of us would have believed it.

Just 4 years ago in 2007 a small team of us worked all year--packing around 100 or 200 boxes at a time--to pack 4,665 boxes. Again, if you'd told us that in just 4 years we'd be planning to pack 15,000 in one day we'd have been incredulous.

As we approach this packing party I am struck by what a miracle this is. This is happening not because of the strength or wisdom of man but because God can do anything and He's graciously chosen to allow us to be a part of what He's doing.

I know that soon I'll be thinking about the details again and wondering how it's all going to work out. But I want to delay that as long as I can. I want to just bask in the wonder of all He's done and all He has planned to bless thousands of children and adults around the world.

It's simple: this is God's work and He will accomplish it.

I want to ponder these things in my heart.

Storage Saga

Wow! Look at this nice empty storage area. Uhhh, that is NOT what our storage container looks like right now. Ours is nearing maximum capacity and when the 30 cases of soap (15,000 bars) get delivered tomorrow morning it may just max out.

Over my years of packing Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, storage has always been an issue. I think I have a soft spot in my heart for that much-maligned guy in the Bible who kept tearing down his barns to build bigger ones. I can see his problem.

Although my hoarding is seasonal, it's still a problem. Back in the middle of the last decade when we had a weekend of packing boxes at my old church it would take 5 team members coming to my house with their cars to unload the stuff from my attic. But that was when we packed about 700 boxes.

The stuff for 15,000 (give or take a few hundred--HOPEFULLY give) makes for a lot of storage space.

I just counted, and I now have 42 garbage bags full of stuffed animals on the spare beds in my home. And I'm still praying for another 12 or 15 bags full over the next week and a half.

So if you live in Erie and have stuffed animals to donate, bring them in ASAP so we can sort and clean them.....but if you have other items to donate, if you can possibly keep them in your home until Sunday, September 18th, I would be so grateful. If you can't, bring them in and we'll find a spot for them somewhere. There's always my bathtub!

And speaking of September 18th, if you go to Grace McKean we could sure use your help to unload the storage container right after the 9:15 worship service is over. With enough help we can get it done quickly.

And then we'll have plenty of room to start filling it up again.

Testing, Stressing, and Resting

I can't believe I haven't done a blog post for almost two weeks and I don't even know where all that time went. Well, actually I know where a lot of it went--school and getting ready for school.

Operation Christmas Child packing party preparations have been taking a back seat to the launch of a new school year. As a school nurse for three elementary schools (one of them new to me this year) I've been facing most days of the past two weeks asking myself, "Where do I begin today?" The new year brings chaos and stress.

By the time I finished my first week on Friday I had a headache that lasted until this morning. And I almost never get headaches.

Which brings me to my wondering about the tests in life and how to move from stressing to resting in the Lord. I've been feeling like my mind is on overdrive with a constant revving. My mind jumps from detail to detail. I can read my facebook statuses from a year ago and find they read the same.

I need to keep reminding myself that God is in control. He always shows up and makes these major packing parties work for His glory. On Wednesday this week I got a neat gift in the mail from my regional Operation Christmas Child office. It's a cool little box filled with slips of paper--each one containing a Bible verse--one for every day between now and the end of Operation Christmas Child's National Collection Week on November 21st. What a perfect gift to get this week! I confess I've been cheating a bit and reading more than the allotted verse per day.

And in the middle of this busy school week there were still packing party preparations. God brought in another 765 stuffed animals this week to be sorted and bagged. I think we're only about 1200 away from the goal now. The idea of God bringing in 15,000 stuffed animals this year is astounding.

I ordered 15,000 bars of soap this week, too.

Thursday evening brought the final meeting of our packing party team and the first where we were all together. It feels like there are a lot of details still up in the air but I know I need to trust God with them.

Three weeks from today it will all be over and the truck should be ready to ship out.

I know there will be a lot of tests in these next weeks and I'm praying God will move me from the stressing to the resting.