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Monday, October 26, 2009

Operation Christmas Child

Our family has been involved with Operation Christmas Child through our church for several years.

If you don’t know much about it, OCC is a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse.  They encourage families to pack shoeboxes full of small gifts for children, collect said shoeboxes and distribute them all over the world along with written materials in each child’s own language that shares the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What better way can we show the love of Christ at Christmas time?

The thing that amazes me is that all a shoebox takes is a quick trip to the dollar store and you will make some child’s day or year.  We have no idea how children have been blessed by what they receive in their shoebox.  But God does.

This year’s experience has been especially meaningful to me personally.  Being where we are in the midst of very little and at times, uncertain income I had to come to a place where I realized that we still have so much more than so many people the world over.  It has been a good exercise in thankfulness for me to sit back and say, “Yes, we can spend the $30 to send 4 children the message of Christ this year at Christmas.”

I believe $30 is a small price to pay.

And, as with any charitable opportunity, it is a wonderful life lesson for my own children.  It gives me a platform in order to teach them how fortunate we are and to think of and give to others.  Sarah is well familiar with OCC.  She even remembers the year we packed boxes with her Kindergarten class (3 years ago).  It was a precious moment when, as a class of 5 year olds, we gathered around and prayed for the children who would receive the boxes we had packed.  Nathan is just beginning to learn these things at 4 years old and we talked about how we could pray for the children and he wrote his name to sign a note in each box.

So, you think you might want to participate in sending the Love of Jesus around the world?  Operation Christmas Child makes it easy. 

If you don’t have a shoebox, they’ve got ‘em.

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If you don’t know what to pack, they have suggestions.

We like to pack:

Colored pencils & pencil sharpeners

Paper or note pads

“Happy Meal” toys

Small stuffed animals

Small “Matchbox” or “Hot wheels” cars

Toothbrush and toothpaste

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National collection week is November 16-23, 2009.  If your church is actively involved, or you do not attend a church, you can look up a local collection site here and enter your zip code.

You can even follow Operation Christmas Child on Twitter at @occ_shoeboxes to get daily updates on how to pray.

So go get busy gathering your shoeboxes and gifts for these precious young children around the world.  And may you find the blessing in being a blessing to the least of these.

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Visit Real Life to see other posts about how Bloggers Care about Operation Christmas Child.

2 Comments:

Real Life Sarah said...

Yay, Donna! I love it that you've made it such a tradition that they get excited about it every year!

bridget {bake at 350} said...

That is really great, Donna!