Ready Again

So much answered prayer today for our upcoming Operation Christmas Child packing party. I didn't know what to expect but God brought just the right number of volunteers and they worked together like a real team.

My husband Jim and Nikki Korrell were joined in the truck by Pastor Rimmer, Dan, and Terry from Bethel Presbyterian Church in Cranesville, PA to get the candy put into cartons on the truck. I couldn't believe we had enough candy to fill 28 cartons. Now I hope we don't run out of cartons for the boxes tomorrow.

Then they loaded the 32 cartons left over from the last packing party into the truck.

We got everything set up and also folded the other 500 boxes. We are ready! I have no idea how many volunteers will show up tomorrow but I'm trusting that once again they will be just who we need.

I think tomorrow I'll get some extra boxes in case we run out....and if we need more cartons....well, I can deal with that on Saturday or Sunday.

We're praying the boys coming from Harborcreek Youth Services will enjoy their time with us tomorrow and that God will be glorifed...

We're ready for Him to show up....again.

Rockin' the Region

Our Operation Christmas Child volunteers nationwide are organized into regions. Our Northwestern PA Operation Christmas Child Area Team is part of the Mid-Atlantic region which covers PA, MD, NJ, VA, DE and a part of WV.

I am so blessed to be part of the Mid-Atlantic region where all of us who are involved with Operation Christmas Child are really like a family. Leigh Fisher is our regional director and our two regional managers are Mesfin Abera and Holly Moerer. JoAnn Waters, administrative assistant, keeps everyone together, and seasonal employees Emilia Campoy and Lauren Booher are special blessings for this busiest of OCC times.

Under Leigh's leadership we work together and support one another. The biggest blessing is that we have the chance to see God answer so many prayers we pray for one another and increase the praise we offer.

I just read the most encouraging message from Amy and Will Shaw, area coordinators in the Philadelphia area, about how God is moving in their area. It's nothing short of miraculous.

Jim Urban in the Northern Pittsburgh area saw God work a miracle. Jim tallied up the cost of the items he needed to purchase for their upcoming packing party and calculated it to be $2500. Well, the next day someone came into the church and donated $2500 for Operation Christmas Child. Seeing the provision of our great Jehovah Jireh at every turn is really the definition of living the abundant life.

As we look toward another packing party on Friday I know my OCC Mid-Atlantic family will be praying, and they'll be rejoicing with me when God shows up again.

Our goal for the Mid-Atlantic region this year is 700,000 shoeboxes aka "Gospel Opportunities". Last year our goal was 630,000 and we prayed fervently for it. Well, God in His signature way, went above and beyond and blessed us with 640,778!!!!!!

But so many more children are waiting. Won't you pray with us that the Lord of the Harvest will bless us (and almost a quarter million children) with another over-the-top harvest this year.

God, ROCK OUR REGION again!

Sacrifice is Relative

God sure has a sense of humor and also has His ways of trying to use His 'rod and staff' to correct my signature sin of pride. I was feeling pretty self-righteous this morning because I was driving to Union City (35 minutes each way) to talk for 15 minutes about Operation Christmas Child in the church service at First Baptist Church.

When I got there, I was setting up my display table when a man and his wife came in. It turns out he was a volunteer from the Gideons and they had driven 4 hours yesterday and stayed overnight so he also could speak for 15 minutes in that morning service. (okay, Lord, I repent). Oh, and the church was planning on having a sermon by the pastor also! It turns out the pastor cut out his sermon and just gave a testimony about the impact the Gideons made on his life instead (good move, pastor).

It's amazing how God always pulls me up short when I start thinking I'm sacrificing for Him. Pictured above is Oxana Moore who flew all the way to Erie from South Carolina after a full work week to speak for 15 minutes at our Operation Christmas Child packing party last month. That's another reminder of true sacrifice.

God's Kingdom work is impossible to evaluate. The Bible says "Man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart." God sees not the number of miles we drive nor the number of shoeboxes we generate--He sees the condition of our heart and what we do with the multiple moments during each day when we get to choose whether to focus on Him or to be distracted.

I looked at last year's numbers and realized the church I was speaking to today had done only 15 boxes last year. So I took along 22 boxes to give out and thought that would be plenty. As it turns out those boxes were snapped up within a few minutes and I could have given out many, many more. I need to be more prepared for what God will do.

This coming week is jam-packed full with OCC 'stuff' again. Tomorrow night I drive to Bradford to speak at a missions' conference, Wednesday we have our OCC area team meeting and start folding boxes for the packing party on Friday. Thursday is set-up for the party and Friday evening we're hosting the packing party again and hoping to pack 1000 more boxes.

In the midst of it all, I don't want to lose sight of what's really important. God isn't looking for miles traveled or boxes packed. What He wants is a living sacrifice and a sacrifice of praise.

God, teach me what it means to follow you in sacrifice.

Perspective

Sometimes in the midst of all the details of my volunteer job with Operation Christmas Child I can lose perspective. As I pray for God to bless us with 32,011 shoebox gifts here in Northwestern PA, with 700,000 in the Mid-Atlantic region, with 5.8 million nationwide, and with 8.5 million worldwide the numbers all blur together in an overwhelming pile of boxes and cartons and trucks and sea containers.

The weeks become a tangle of packing party preparations and speaking engagements and phone calls to return and information to absorb and remember.

But as I sat on the floor today putting stacks of 8 crayons into individual bags I thought once more of this amazing truth: every crayon I touch will go into the hands of a child in another country who will be blessed by it.

This Operation Christmas Child project is vast but it's also vastly personal. Last year we prayed for a goal of 630,000 shoeboxes in the Mid-Atlantic region and God went way beyond our expectations and blessed us with 640,778.

It was neat this week when we heard that in Mexico last year 640,000 boxes were distributed and there were 334,000 recorded decisions made for Christ as a result of them. That's a huge number but each of those children is an individual who God knows and loves intimately. He knows the hopes and dreams and even the number of hairs on the head of each of those children.

I was reminded again today of an Operation Christmas Child motto--

ONE box=ONE child=ONE soul

One box makes a tremendous difference because it's one fewer child who's kept waiting to hear of God's love. So pack a box! If you're not sure how to do that, click here to learn how.

Pack with God's perspective.

The Details

Once again I feel like I'm sitting on a mountain of details. For months I'd been holding out for the Operation Christmas Child packing party on September 24th. I envisioned that at the end of that day the storage container and my house would both be empty. Well, I guess one out of two isn't bad.

I looked at the storage container this morning and realized it still looks full. We're looking at another possible smaller packing party for October 21st and, once again, I hold out hope that after that date we can get the container cleaned out and the 15,000 bags of candy put into cartons to be trucked to the processing center.

But then I realized that even after that weekend the container will still hold the boxes that people at the church have filled that are waiting for National Collection Week from November 14-21. So....maybe by Thanksgiving the container will be cleared out? Hope springs eternal.

Still, I'm so grateful to God for these leftover items that will allow us to pack more boxes because, as I told the dear folks when I spoke for a few minutes in church this morning "ONE box=ONE child=ONE soul." Each box means one fewer child who will go without.

My home is starting to fill up again. Today I brought home crayons to be bagged and cartons of toothbrushes to sort and cartons of flat boxes to distribute to other churches.

More details. But I'll just get through them one by one because, by God's grace, more details means we're NOT DONE YET!

Abundant Blessings & Leftovers

I've been blessed so abundantly and here's a picture of another. After God showered us so richly with all the answered prayer for our Operation Christmas Child packing party last Saturday, my friend Judy Craynon blessed me on Sunday with the gift of this gorgeous lap quilt she made for me.

This might sound bizarre, but I have this thing about warmth being a sign of God's love to me. When I feel sunshine on my back or the coziness of the blankets on my bed or something like the warm comfort of this magnificent gift, I feel it as a sense of God's presence. So this special gift will be reminding me of God's love (and of Judy's friendship and giving heart) for years to come.

I went to our storage container on Wednesday and made an attempt to inventory our leftovers from last week's packing party. It was tough to be accurate but I was amazed to find that there's enough stuff there to probably do another 1000 boxes. Only God knows how that happened.

After my little inventory I went to Panera Bread to have a celebration and debriefing with my packing party committee. I had it on my heart to do another packing party and invite some folks from the community who are usually on the receiving end to help us pack the boxes. Considering all the work we'd completed only days before, I was afraid to broach the subject, but when I did the group was all for it. What a great foursome they are and a true gift from God.

It's hard to believe that only a few months ago I felt so alone in the planning for the packing party--adrift really. But God brought this group together and I'm just totally blessed by their competence and dedication.

Details are still up in the air for another mini-packing-party but I know God will bring it together in His time. Meanwhile, between church rummage sales and donations there were another 300 stuffed animals to sort and clean this weekend. I don't believe these animals are destined to sit in the container until next year. God has a plan for them to be on their way in those special shoeboxes--whether from Erie or from some surrounding area that needs them.

Because God's blessings, like His long ago provision of manna, are never leftovers.

Water to Wine & God's Everlasting Love

The Operation Christmas Child packing party is over and the post-packing-party letdown is a little like the day after Christmas itself. I'm surrounded by the messy aftermath of a jumbled storage container and trying to figure out the logistics of packing the leftover items into more boxes.

I slogged through the day at school and drove home dreading the chaos I'd see when I opened the door at home. Instead, when I walked through that door the first thing I saw was a beautiful bouquet of flowers. My husband knows better than to send me flowers. I'm a practical person who'd much rather have a pizza dinner than flowers.

So I pulled the card from the envelope and saw no name--only this note "May the beauty of the flowers be a reminder of God's everlasting love." Tears welled up because, yes, they are a reminder of God's love. They aren't practical but they are a balm to the soul.

They make me think of Jesus' first miracle--turning water into wine. The people at that party didn't need wine (whether it was alcoholic or not). They had perfectly good water to drink. Yet Jesus chose to bless them with something they didn't need--something unnecessary that would bring them pleasure and show His amazing love for them as well as His divine power to change the ordinary into the extraordinary.

That's really what our Operation Christmas Child boxes do, too. People sometimes ask me why I don't invest all this energy and passion into something like drilling wells or feeding the hungry. And I do contribute to Samaritan's Purse and other relief agencies who do those things.

Yet there's something about a treasured shoebox gift that brings love and hope, and those are just as necessary--maybe even more so--than food and water. When I saw my gift today--those flowers--I was filled with God's love and hope. I think I got a new glimpse of how those children feel when they see a gift packed by an unknown giver and realize, "someone was thinking of me."

I hope the bestower of my gorgeous bouquet is reading this. I hope you know how loved I feel today--by you and by God. I hope you know how much this symbol of God's everlasting love means in my life.

Because hope and love are what life is made of.