The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Not Knowing

Here are the 4th grade volunteers who helped me with the Operation Christmas Child stuffed animal drive at Belle Valley School.  By the end of the day on Friday, February 17th the students had brought in a total of 972 stuffed animals.

I'm very encouraged that this went so smoothly with no parent complaints and that almost all of the animals were new and usable for our big shoebox packing party.  The success of this drive has made me pray and strategize about how to get other schools involved in doing collections also.

If I could get 10 more schools to do this and they were all this successful--well, that would take care of almost half of the 20,000 stuffed animals I'm praying for this year.

I've been fighting a cold the past few days and feeling pretty miserable.  I've also tried to be a good Operation Christmas Child Area Coordinator and make calls to do 're-ups' on my team members--checking their information and finding out if they still want to continue on the team.

Sadly, I've already had to put one team member on inactive status and another coordinator is thinking about stepping down because of heavy family responsibilities.  We're still praying about that.  If she does step down that leaves me with just one coordinator on the team.

As I think and pray about my team it's hard not to listen to Satan's jibes as he reminds me of my failures.   But I'm going to metaphorically put my fingers in my ears and keep trusting.

I believe God has good plans for our team.  Despite the fact that we don't fit the typical Operation Christmas Child high-impact team model yet, God keeps blessing us with more boxes every year.

On the other hand, it would be so much easier if we had a full complement of healthy team members to divide the responsibilities.  Somewhere in Erie, Crawford, and Warren counties God is preparing just the right people to partner in this amazing ministry of Operation Christmas Child.

The agony is not knowing who they are.

What Is My Job?

Every day I'm doing something for Operation Christmas Child  but often I wonder if I'm doing the right things.  Many days it involves chores like sorting and washing stuffed animals or shopping for pens and then opening the packages those pens come in and storing them in boxes.

Right now we're running a stuffed animal drive at the public school where I work, so every day after school I've been hauling heaping bags of stuffed animals into the house for processing.

It's necessary work, but is it the job I'm supposed to be doing?  I know that as a volunteer Area Coordinator for Operation Christmas Child it's my job to build and lead a team to take over these responsibilities.  I've been struggling with this for nearly five years now.

Sometimes I'm encouraged and think we're making progress as a team and sometimes I get discouraged when I see how far we are from being a really cohesive well-working team that supports one another.

Instead of hauling stuffed animals I should probably be making some phone calls to recruit new team members or to support those already on my team.  I should be planning something fun to do at our team meeting next week.  I should be concocting some sort of plan to build unity out of our God-ordained diversity.   Oh, but that all sounds so very, very hard.

I think I'll go hug some stuffed animals.

Stuffed Animal Safari

I am on a constant safari for stuffed animals for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.  This week we started a stuffed animal drive at the public school where I work as a school nurse.  I have to say I was a little uneasy about sending home flyers with the "Operation Christmas Child" name on them.  It just takes one parent complaint to cause an uproar.

But there haven't been any complaints yet and we've collected almost 500 animals so far. 

Soon it will be yard sale season and the real safari hunts will begin.  Today I had a deal for a free T-Shirt on Vistaprint so I made this one to wear when I go to yard sales.  Now I won't have to be so bold and do all the asking myself and maybe some other shoppers will see my advertisement (something similar is printed on the back of the shirt, too)and offer me some of their animals.  

I know God knows where each of these 20,000 precious animals are going to come from and I can't wait to haul them home. 

Shoeboxes in Haiti

In Operation Christmas Child world there are many people longing to go to another country to distribute shoeboxes to the children.  To see those smiling faces firsthand is a dream for many who have labored long and hard at packing shoeboxes for years.

Today this picture arrived on my phone, sent from a mission team from our church that's ministering in Haiti right now.  They had the unexpected pleasure of distributing Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes at a school there this morning.

The amazing thing to me is that when another team went from our church last year at about this time they also had the opportunity to distribute Operation Christmas Child boxes.  To have this happen to a team from our church two years in a row seems beyond belief.

I'm so happy that more friends from our church, including our senior pastor and another staff member, had this chance to see for themselves what these boxes mean to the children who receive them.  

Hopefully, they will have an even better idea of what it means that they've been willing to let us take over the church for a week at the end of September for the past three years.   They'll see those smiles and understand the value of having an ugly 40 foot storage container nestled against the side of their pristine church building all year long.

Last summer one of the church's staff said, "If we spent as much time promoting every ministry as we do promoting Operation Christmas Child we'd never have any time left in the service."

 I hope that seeing these children's faces will help them to see how grateful I am for every minute Grace Church has taken out of their worship time to make an announcement, every inconvenience they've suffered and every dollar they've spent to support three huge community-wide packing parties and three church-wide shoebox collections that have resulted in nearly 37,000 Operation Christmas Child boxes being sent.

37,000 boxes sent out over the past 3 years.  That's a lot of smiles.

And it's worth it.

Never Once - God's Fatihfulness

Here we are back at the time of year where all of us in leadership with Operation Christmas Child--volunteers and staff alike--are setting goals and planning for another year.  

I think I speak for all of us when I say that starting over is the hardest part of every year.  Satan whispers things like, "Do you really want to do THAT again?  Remember how much work it was?  Remember all those roadblocks you had? "

This morning when we sang this worship song in church I couldn't believe how well it related to the journey of Operation Christmas Child.  In all of the work of the past year, NEVER ONCE did God leave us alone.

He was the author and finisher of all of it.  If you're an Operation Christmas Child staffer or volunteer (whether you work year-round in OCC or work to pack shoeboxes in a more seasonal way) please watch this and read the truth of the words.

Just as God stood with us while we were kneeling on the battleground of 2011, so He stands with us for 2012.  

He will never leave us.  NEVER ONCE.

$5 of Shoebox Stuff for Free at Michaels

Look at these cool garden tools I got for my Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes today for FREE at Michaels.  They only had 4 of them left so I threw in a jump rope to make it $5.00 even.  Then I used the coupon that you can print here to take $5.00 off and got it all for FREE.  I didn't even have to pay PA state tax.  The coupon is only good for today so print it out and see what you can get at Michaels for your Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes and comment here to let me know.

Praying By The Numbers

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Today is the quarterly Day of Prayer and Fasting for Operation Christmas Child.   What a joy it's been to pray through pages of prayer requests from many countries around the world and to praise God specifically for what He's doing in each of them.

Last weekend I was blessed to go to Maryland for our Operation Christmas Child regional area coordinators' retreat.  In 2011 we were praying that God would bless us with 700,000 shoeboxes in our region and He went way beyond our expectations to give us 723,327.

At the retreat our Mid-Atlantic goal for 2012 was revealed--800,000 boxes.  As I've said before, I love numbers, so I've been looking at the numbers of shoeboxes collected in our Mid-Atlantic Region in past years.

From 2007 to 2008 we increased by about 38,000 boxes (over 8% increase)
From 2008 to 2009 God gave an increase of 47,750 boxes (over 9% increase)
From 2009 to 2010 the increase was almost 69,000 boxes (over 12% increase)
From 2010 to 2011 God increased us by almost 83,000 boxes (12.88% increase)

The growth is still incremental but it seems to be accelerating.   We stand amazed at all God is doing and at the teams He is building.

At the same time, I don't want to fall into the danger of taking this growth for granted and thinking that increased growth in 2012 will happen automatically.  Over those past four years there were countless hours of work and prayer invested by thousands of volunteers.

Today as my prayer coordinator, Linda Bennett, and I prayed over the phone we asked God again for His miracles for 2012.   We are trusting Him for His provision for every goal but we never want to think that God doesn't want us involved.

I'm reminded of a quote by Martin Luther that reminds me of the tension between prayer and putting our hands to the work,

"Pray like it all depends on God, then when you are done, go work like it all depends on you."

And all those numbers?  Each one of them represents a child waiting to know God's love.  So I'm going to pray without ceasing and ask God to move me to get busy.