Shoebox Workhorses

We recently said goodbye to a faithful old friend--with some emphasis on the old.  Our 2006 Dodge Caravan was purchased specifically with shoebox hauling in mind.  My kids teased me for having a "soccer mom" car when our soccer days were decades in the past.  

But this workhorse uncomplainingly transported countless cartons of fillers and bags of stuffed animals.  More than once I abused it with an overweight load like that time I filled it with a literal ton of crayons that forced the back bumper nearly to the ground.

Faithful though she's been, the old girl was showing her age with various "check" lights on the instrument panel lighting up at odd intervals.  So we prayerfully made the decision to buy a new vehicle.

At first my husband lobbied for a smaller car but as we loaded up the van a few times recently he realized our shoebox habit still needed some decent cargo space.

So...after a lot of prayer last week we took possession of our next shoebox workhorse--an updated Dodge Caravan.

I prayed for God to lead us to a car that was built on the auto worker's "good day"--one that will be mechanically sound and last for years.  I trust this is it.  It still has that great new car smell that we've rarely experienced in our marriage.  Truthfully, I hate to put the first load of cardboard in it, but it's time.

After all, cardboard is its destiny.

Leap Day Affirmation

Our Northwestern PA Operation Christmas Child area team decided to meet today--on Leap Day--because we thought it would be a great way to celebrate this day that comes only once every four years.

It also turned out to be a day when I think I tried to pack a little too much into too little time.  God blessed us with a new application over the weekend, and I  decided on a whim to see if this prospective team member could join us at our meeting.  When I found out she could be here, I offered to do her interview before the meeting and she agreed.

Then, just hours before the meeting, I thought about inviting our two new ministry coordinators to sit in on the interview.  Amazingly, they were both available.

And...right before the meeting my husband and I had to go pick up the car we bought this weekend (another subject for another post.)

Since our team meets at my house the day also involved last-minute cleaning, final touches on the agenda, and also making a trip across town to deliver rope and handles to someone who is making jump ropes.

But...it was all worth it tonight when a record number of 15 turned out for our meeting.  We did a simple Valentine affirmation activity.  We each got a heart with our name on it, then we passed the hearts around the circle and took turns writing a word or phrase of affirmation on each person's heart. Words are my love language, so I know I'll keep that heart in my Bible to re-read many times throughout this year.

Our new Church Relations Coordinator and Community Relations Coordinator each spent time meeting with their teams separately while I met with the other five assorted team members.   Plans were made for more affirmation--of participating churches and groups.

We also got to affirm and congratulate Cathi, our team member who is receiving the Women Making History award from a local organization.  We are so blessed to have her on our team.

There was a lot of laughter tonight, and we even got to see an x-ray of Bob's recent hip replacement. He's not leaping yet, but I'll bet it won't be long.

So let me affirm...having a meeting with a great group of volunteers adds up to a memorable Leap Day.

Whassup? Cups!

So, my dear blog readers, are you getting tired of pictures of cardboard boxes yet?  I think I was destined to spend a life involved with cardboard.  I started working at age 14 at Juvenile Bootery-- the children's shoe store where my mother worked--and continued in that job through summers in college.  I started handling large quantities of shoeboxes decades before Operation Christmas Child was ever conceived.

In the past ten years I've progressed to handling large cartons of shoebox items.  I've become a connoisseur of cardboard.  There's nothing like a good, sturdy box.  Unfortunately, today's boxes were not so good and sturdy.

I'm not complaining, though, because today's truck delivery was filled with blessings--21,600 nice plastic cups--brightly colored and 17 oz. each.

You know how I've been praying this year that God would allow our boxes to be better quality and be sure to bless each child who receives one.  I've been trying to accumulate more filler items, so I was ecstatic last week when I was able to find good cups at a low price.

When I heard they were being shipped via truck on pallets, I was worried they'd arrive in large pallet boxes and we'd need to find individual boxes for them.  Also, I wanted to be sure they arrived before I had to leave for the OCC Connect Conference in three weeks.  God answered both those prayers--they came today--in cartons and in an unprecedented nine days' time.

The weather today was sunny--cool but calm.  A perfect day for two 60-something women to unload 1,706 pounds of cups.  The delivery was scheduled between 10am and noon.  This was tricky because my faithful HELPer, Pam,  had an appointment at 10 am and I was supposed to be at my volunteer job at noon--12:30 at the latest .

By God's grace the driver called at 11:30 and was there pretty promptly.  Shawn, the driver, got the pallets dropped next to the container then discovered he couldn't get the truck out of the driveway until we unloaded and moved the pallets.  He told us to take our time while he waited in the truck and watched Pam and I wrestle those 31 cartons (probably 40+ pounds each) into the container.  We had to keep stopping to repair boxes when the bottom seams would start to let loose as we lifted them.

Eventually I think he got tired of waiting and came to help us get the last pallet of boxes stacked up to the four-high level in the container.  Whew!  The truck was on its way by 12:10 giving me just enough time to make it to downtown Erie by 12:30.

The ever-positive Pam said she'd been telling God how she hadn't been disciplining herself to exercise and He'd just helped her out with that.  So true.  I'm thinking I should keep knee braces in the storage container for the next delivery.

Still, a few weeks ago I never would have dreamed we'd have thousands of nice cups filling up our storage container.  God is always up to something.  And it's always good.

Turning A Corner

This is a blog of praise for turning corners.  This afternoon my husband turned a corner after being sick for the past two days with a severe headache and high blood pressure.  A trip to the ER yesterday earned him some IV pain meds and some assorted tests that were, by God's grace, all negative.

Still, this morning he had so much pain he wanted to go back to the ER again.  We agreed to wait an hour to make a decision and I prayed fervently for God to give us a clear answer about what to do.  He slept for two hours and woke up feeling better.  Praise God for answered prayer and a corner turned.

I feel I've turned a corner, too, in my Operation Christmas Child leadership life.  Lately I've been able to think about leadership without struggling so much.  I started to read a book on leadership by John Maxwell last week and my initial reaction was my usual depression.  The bar is always set so high it seems unattainable.  No matter how hard I try I could never succeed in being the leader I should be.

The good news, though, is I was able to talk some truth to myself and decide to find one thing from my reading I could apply.  If I can make even one small step toward being a better leader it will be better than allowing Satan to defeat me.  I believe the prayers of others are a part of that.

I'm also starting to realize I can't do this forever--at least the hauling and carrying part that makes up the packing party.  I spend time with an older friend and mentor twenty years my senior.  When I told her this week that I worry my strength is failing she chuckled, shook her head, and told me she thinks I have a few good decades left.  It's all relative, I know.

Still, on Tuesday afternoon after loading twenty bags of donated sandals with thick rubber soles into my minivan I was pretty tired.  I've kept up with running and workout routines, but I notice the difference in stamina from even a few years ago.

Another job of this week has been counting out jump rope handles and cut rope and bundling it into plastic totes.  Each tote contains the supplies to make 200 jump ropes.  On Monday as I hefted three totes into my car to drive them to a volunteer, I pondered how many trips it will take to drive these around town.  Maybe I should have just waited until spring and tried to have some work days at the church to save myself some effort.  It's a constant juggling game to try to figure out how to do things efficiently while still involving other people.

On Wednesday we got a storm that dropped a foot of snow and forced the cancellation of two training sessions with new team members.  I guess that was for the best anyway since we spent four hours in the ER and I also got to shovel the sidewalk and driveway twice.

Being home today gave me a chance to haul the bags of sandals in from the car and get them packed into cartons for storage.  There were a total of 447 pairs in those boxes now surrounding the dining room table.   With subzero temps forecast for the weekend I might have to wait until next week to get them stored in the container.

I also spent a few hours watching the series of High Impact volunteer training videos on the OCC Extranet site. Surprisingly, I found them pretty inspirational.

Yes, I do believe we've turned some corners.

Roping It In

Things might look a little precarious here but actually I've been really blessed over the last few days.  I returned Sunday evening from an amazing retreat with the other Operation Christmas Child Area Coordinators from the Mid-Atlantic region.  

Last year I missed the retreat because of a crazy snowstorm but this year God answered prayer with wonderful dry roads for the drive down to Maryland and back.  It's always a joy to be with other OCC volunteers, but this year was especially wonderful.  I didn't feel any of the usual discouragement I experience at training events and it was so exciting to hear how God blessed our region with a record 1,138,928 shoeboxes in 2015--an incredible 11.3% increase over 2014.  

I came home excited for the year ahead.  Despite losing two of our long-term coordinators, I know God has good plans for us in 2016 and I'm eager to start casting vision for our ministry plan.

While I was gone I got word that the two pallets (180 spools) of rope I ordered would be delivered today.  I got the pre-delivery call earlier than I expected this morning and headed out to meet the truck.

As you can see from the picture above, the driver had some problems with the lift gate.  I stood by praying while that heavy pallet of rope spools teetered over the edge and threatened to crash over the side.  I pictured myself chasing rolling spools of rope down the driveway.  After 15 minutes of trying, the driver finally gave up and we offloaded the spools by hand while still in the truck.  

Thankfully the second pallet was easier to move on the lift gate and got dropped without incident and I was able to pray with Eric, the truck driver, before he headed out.

 My husband arrived to lend a hand and Dustin, part of the church's creative team, blessed us by stopping to help us stow the spools in the container.  Space constraints forced us to stack the spools high and the stacks look pretty unstable.

The guys rigged up a pallet and a strap to try to provide some stability.  I'm praying that holds them upright.  

Now...let the jump rope making commence...

Hard Changes

I guess my Operation Christmas Child life is really no different than all of life.  There's good and there's bad and sometimes it's hard to tell which is which.

There have been some crazy good things happening lately--an unprecedented number of new applications and amazing numbers of shoebox items for our 2016 packing party already safely in our storage container.

Just in the past few days one of our team members scored 945 beanie babies on an online sale site and was able to purchase them for the low cost of 3/$1.00.   Yesterday I ordered 180 spools of rope with 1200 ft. on each spool--that's a lot of miles of rope to be made into jump ropes.  And yesterday afternoon I got a delivery of 2,000 plastic cups.  Yes, great things happening.

But, then, right on the heels of last Thursday's news of our longtime Church Relations Coordinator leaving the team I got the news early this morning that my Prayer Team Coordinator feels God's calling her to leave the team also.  This wasn't totally unexpected, but the finality of the news was still a blow.

I got off that call, did an upper body workout in the middle of some tears, and loaded all the cups into my car to take them to the storage container.  When I opened the storage container I forgot we'd left heavy boxes of erasers right in front of the door the last time we were in there because it was cold and we didn't want to deal with them.  Now, in my efforts to move them I tripped, fell and slammed my knee and hand hard on the floor.  I sat and cried for about thirty seconds and then decided that was enough.

Getting to work, I managed to get things moved around, carried the cartons from the car and got them stowed in the back of the container.  Then things got comical when I tried to load 18 empty paper cartons in my car.  I wanted to get them out of the container and take them home to use for storing the donation of beanie babies.  The problem was that it was crazy windy.  I foolishly left the side door of my minivan open so when I put those empty cartons in the back of the car, three of them blew out the side of the car sending me on a chase down the driveway after them.   Yeah, it was just a little inconvenience but sometimes you're just over it, ya know?

I came home and sat for a few moments to regroup before heading out for an afternoon volunteer stint at our local mission.  As I rocked and ate my yogurt God started convicting me of my attitude.  I'd progressed from discouragement to anger.  So I confessed to God and also to a sister in Christ as I happened to be answering an email from her about another matter.  I asked her to pray for me, then I shut down my computer and headed out.  After volunteering I met with my mentor and she prayed for me also.

By the time I got home I realized my anger had dissipated.  Praise God for that answered prayer.  The return email from my sister in Christ sent me a great assurance from Isaiah 43:18,19 "Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past.  Behold, I will do something new, Now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?  I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert."  What a great word!

Tonight we had our first OCC team meeting for 2016.  As usual, there were quite a few team members who couldn't attend but the eight of us who were there had a blessed time.  I sense God is going to do a new thing this year.

Together we came to unity and set a goal of 51,500 shoeboxes for this year, by God's grace.

Good.  Bad.  Blessed.  Challenging.  Hard changes will give way to a roadway in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Questions In The Night

It's funny how the questions come in the night.  I can barrel through my day going from one thing to the next, effectively pushing thoughts and decisions out of my mind.

But so often when I crawl into bed and pull up the covers my mind loses its inhibitions and bounces like a kid on a trampoline.

This has been a crazy week in my Operation Christmas Child world.  On Monday and into Tuesday we had a snowstorm that might have seemed ho-hum for us at this time most winters (we are the #1 snowiest city right now.)   But we've had a mild winter so far so the 20" or so of snow we got within 24 hours was a bit of a shock.  Then my husband announced he thought his chest felt a little tight while shoveling snow so I pushed him aside and took that job (don't worry, he had a cardiologist appointment this week, too.)

On Tuesday I got a call that we had another truck delivery coming on Wednesday.  I prayed hard again and God blessed--the truck driver called and gave us a half hour notice.  That gave me time to get to the church and get the three foot drift shoveled from the front of the container so we could open the door.  The snow had stopped by then and there was no wind, so even though it was only 13 degrees the weather wasn't a problem and the pallet of items that were delivered were pretty easy to get stashed away.  Whew!

On Wednesday evening I decided to send a Facebook message to someone local whom I've never met outside of social media.  She's been posting some awesome things about her prayer life and I had a prompting to ask her about joining our prayer team.  She quickly responded to my message and at around 9 pm I sent her an e-mail telling her more about our team and sent her an Operation Christmas Child volunteer application.

On Thursday morning I discovered she'd completed the application by midnight.  I called Linda, our Prayer Team Coordinator and asked her if she could do the interview, and before long she had an appointment set up to do the interview at 4 pm that day.  I called to do reference checks and had them completed before 1 pm.  We had everything completed within less than 24 hours--a record for sure!  

That makes three applications in the past two weeks.  That's a miracle only God could accomplish.

On Thursday morning our team Network Coordinators met with our Collection Center Coordinator to do a debriefing, then I spent the afternoon cross-referencing the shoebox drop-off logs with our records from last year.

It was disappointing to see we had a lot of information missing on the logs this year.  We really need to focus with our relay centers on how important that information is.  I'm not sure how we're going to be able to successfully affirm the donating churches with such sketchy drop-off logs.

That leads to Thursday night when I met with Heather, our Church Relations Coordinator, who has been on our team since we started in 2007.  Actually, Heather and I have been packing boxes together since several years before the team even formed.  As we talked she told me she feels it's time for her to step off the team.  It was hard to hear, but she wants to be more involved in local church ministry and I want her to be in the place God wants her to be serving.  Man, I am not a fan of change, and this one is hard.

As I prayed this morning it was one of those times of prayer when there just aren't words.  I told my Father I wanted Him to hold me.  Now, I know God doesn't have a human body but sometimes I still like to picture just lying down and putting my head in His lap--the way I used to do with my mom when I was small.  I'm glad I have a God who holds me.

Today was scheduled with some fun visits with people I love and ended with our small group meeting tonight.  It was a full week and a good day.

But...when I crawled into bed and pulled up the covers...my mind took off again.

How will we handle these changes on our team?  What can I do to make sure our new team members get a good start in their roles?  How can we become the high-impact team we aspire to be?  We have our first team meeting of 2016 next Tuesday and I have no idea how to make it a good meeting. Several people told me recently they don't like to come to the meetings.

So...how do I plan a meeting that will make people want to go out and drive on a cold, dark night when the wind chill is -2 degrees and there's two feet of snow on the ground?  Maybe we should switch our meetings to daytime?  I'm already thinking we need to alternate days.  Maybe I should have catered meals or dancing elephants?   Sometimes it feels like casting the vision for changing the lives of children for eternity just isn't enough.

Maybe I should rent a trampoline.