Now that Thanksgiving is passed, I consider it officially the Christmas season!
Over these last few months, our family has had the wonderful privilege of participating in a project hosted by Samaritan’s Purse, called Operation Christmas Child. Each year, organizations and individuals have the chance to collect items to pack into a shoe box. The idea is to fill it with toiletries, toys, and trinkets for kids of different age ranges. These boxes will have the gospel message of God’s love enclosed, and then go out to kids around the world who would otherwise never receive a Christmas gift. Take a look at this official promo video from Samaritan’s Purse to see the amazing smiles of the youngsters who receive a box. It brings tears to my eyes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6VQLYfPDbE
Can I tell you? It was such a joyful project to join in on! River Run Christian Church did a super job of encouraging a collection of items to pack into the shoe boxes since July — flip flops, toothpaste and brushes, pencils and markers, notebooks, toys and more. The older kids had contests each week with their small groups over who could bring in the most items. One night the 3 of them took in 42 washcloths and 65 bars of soap! The younger 2 got to bring home an empty box and choose all the items that went into it themselves. We had a family night out at the store choosing items to go into these boxes. What a special time it was to put care and thought into what a five year old boy or a 3 year old girl in a third world country would be receiving as their (probably only) Christmas gift.
To top it all off, we joined numerous others on a Sunday afternoon and took over the gym at River Run for a “box-packing” party. Over 800 boxes were packed up that day! Each box was carefully chosen and prayed over and stacked up to be shipped out later that week. Our kids loved it. Ken and I loved it. We were blessed by the time. And I pray it will have a profound affect on our kiddos for a lifetime.
Merry Christmas! Let the countdown begin! 😉
–Beth
We got to be a part of Operation Christmas Child as well this year! Fun that we can be so far, but be doing similar things!
Yes! That’s so cool that we were each working on boxes! 🙂 So fun!
Fun! What a neat thing to be a part of and for the kids to able to participate in. I’ll have to look for that around here…we’re taking part in Angel Tree this year, but I had never heard of Operation Christmas Child until this. I’ll do some research on it, thanks for passing along.
P.S. That pic of Marissa and Cole is perfect! 😉
Angel Tree is great, too! I agree — good picture of Cole and Riss . . . looking up to big brother!! 🙂