It's Shoebox Time!

One of our family's favorite - if not THE favorite - activity of all of Christmas is doing Operation Christmas Child. If you're not familiar, OCC is Franklin Graham's project to spread the Gospel to remote countries of the world by sending gifts to children at Christmas. It's super easy: you just get a shoebox (we happened to get the free ones from Family Christian Store this year), fill it with small toys, health and hygene products, school supplies, etc., pay about $7 for shipping, and then drop it off at a designated location in your area. OCC takes the boxes all over the world and distributes them to needy children....along with the Gospel of Jesus. Tons of little ones and their parents are getting saved through this project. And it's A LOT of fun for our family to make the boxes! Thursday night, we chose to make a box for a boy and a girl, both ages 5-9. We went to the store and stocked-up on as much as we could fit into our shoeboxes, and then came home and packed them. It's a challenge! Really, we would love to put much, much more into those little boxes, but you have to get it all in there. This is always such a good lesson for our children, who can hardly understand that we are giving gifts to children who have probably never received a gift before, and may never have even heard of "Christmas" or "Jesus." As we started putting things in our cart, John said, "Mommy, we're going to need a couple of boxes for my little boy. He seemed shocked when I told him that his little boy can only receive one box. The really cool part now is that if you pay your shipping on-line, OCC will actually track your box and send you an e-mail of where the child lives who you helped!

Anna shows-off the Disney princess dolls we chose for our little girl. I would love to tell you that all three of my children have a big heart for Operation Christmas Child, but.....well....you'll see below that one of them wasn't so sure about giving these wonderful toys away!

4-year old Anna Jean did NOT want to put those dolls in that box! She said, "But Mommy, we don't even know that girl!" Ah, the lessons of life... Above, our finished boxes! Included in each were a stuffed animal, matchbox cars/princess dolls, jumpropes, pencils, a pencil sharpener, rules, a notebook of paper, toothpaste and a toothbrush, a bar of soap, bandaids, bouncy balls, and and hair barrets/hair picks/combs.

So here's the deal. If you would REALLY like to feel like you've celebrated Christmas in a special way that honors Jesus this year, there's still time to do Operation Christmas Child: Collection Week is this coming week! Here's a link with all the details.

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/