Operation Christmas Child

Do you know about Operation Christmas Child?  If not, you must get educated about this wonderful opportunity to help children overseas.  For several years, I have participated in this wonderful experience.  Now that we have children, we get the children involved in it.  This is Operation Christmas Child in a nutshell.  You buy small items for a child and pack it in a shoebox, take it to your local church and it gets sent to a distribution center (like Atlanta) and is sent to children overseas.  Billy Graham's son is the one that started it.  So, it is very Christ oriented.  From what I understand, the children also receive information on Christ inside their boxes.

I typically buy things all year long.  Whenever I make it to a Target, I go to the $1 aisle and go crazy looking for items that would bring lots of joy to a special child.  Then a couple of weeks before the boxes have to be turned it, Connor, Blake and I hit the Dollar Tree to get the final items for our box.  Our box usually contains several toys (cars, paddle balls, play doh, crayons, pens, jump rope, mini frisbee, etc).  Then we usually put in some toothpaste, toothbrush, comb and soap.  Over the past couple of years, our church has started packing these items in plastic shoe box containers.  The children are then able to use these boxes to store food, bring water back to their village, etc. 

This past Sunday was the dedication service at our church for these boxes.  People bring their filled boxes to the alter and we have a special prayer for the children who will be receiving these boxes.  So, we got all of our items out and packed up our boxes for Sunday.  I like for us to do this as a family and talk about the children who will be getting these items.  It is so important to me for Connor to realize how blessed we are and we should in turn help others that are less fortunate as us.  It is just so hard for him to understand that there are children that don't have any toys at all and have never gotten a Christmas present.  So, we always talk about these children and pray for them before we take the boxes to church.  Here are the boys packing Connor's box.  I decided to go ahead and pack Blake's box.  Well, he got upset that he didn't have one, so I took a few items out of his box so he could repack it! 

Our church is this area's drop-off location, so I am anxious to hear how many boxes were brought in this week and loaded onto the big truck to be taken to Atlanta.  As of Wednesday night, our church alone had packed 611!!!  Our goal was 700, so I hope by today we were able to meet our goals.

Another fun part of Operation Christmas Child is a new addition last year.  You can now pay your shipping online and receive a bar code to put on top of your box.  In a few weeks, we'll get an e-mail letting us know what country our box will be delivered to.  Connor really enjoyed getting to know where his box went to last year.  This year, since he is a little older, I plan to get the globe out and show him where our boxes are going.