Tags
blogging101, Creative Writing, Faith and Writing, Family, Operation Christmas Child, Writing 101
This past week I had the pleasure of working for two days with Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse International. Samaritan’s Purse is an organization dedicated to sharing Jesus with kids and families around the world. I spent my two days receiving and helping to pack and box up Christmas shoe boxes of all types and sizes for children from Chile to Haiti to Cambodia and beyond. Our church was a drop-off point for all the organizations and individuals who participated in the project.
Drollery and I also filled two boxes of our own. One for a boy (aged 5-9) and one for a girl (aged 5-9). I get such a kick out of going shopping for the little things we put in. Toys, games, hygiene products, candy, etc. It can be quite a challenge fitting it all in the shoe box. Here’s what we did…
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Girl’s items, boy’s items, it all fits! And finally packed. You can see how it works. A check for $7 for each box is put inside the box to pay for shipping. You can also put a card in it with your name and address in case the child can write and would like to send you a note.
I’m going to paste in the link for the site. Collection ends on Monday. But if anyone is interested there may still be time to find a drop off point near you and get your box there by Monday. Or you can go to the site and do a virtual box on line by choosing what items you would like in your box. Either way you can track your packages to see what country and area they go to. Usually they are received between March and April.
This is such a fun thing to do at Christmas. It’s really what Christmas is all about. So here’s the link if anyone’s interested: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/ If you do decide to join in and send a box, drop me a note and let me know. I’d love to follow your box with you. I’ll let you know where ours went when we find out!
Impromptu Promptlings 
We did this with my kids, it was my mother’s idea. The boys each sent a box to a boy in their own age group. They made cards as well, which seemed to make them realize that they were sending the boxes to actual people. Particularly my five-year-old was taken by the whole thing and it was so good to see how glad it made him to think that he was helping another child have a nice Christmas too. This will probably form a part of our Christmas traditions from now on. I think our boxes were going to Romania.
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So cool! Do you remember how long it took them to get to Romania? How did they notify you they’d gotten there? We’ve been doing the boxes for years, but we never bothered to track them before.
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We just sent them a week ago. The system is different here in Finland apparently and all the boxes sent from here go to Romania or Moldova since those are the poorest countries in Europe. I guess it would make no sense to send them further, although there are a lot of poor children living on the streets etc. right next door to us in Russia.
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