Operation Christmas Child

This afternoon after attending a lovely retirement luncheon for our friend Roger, and his wife, Cherie, the two of us had a great time shopping for goodies to fill these gift boxes.

Even though I blipped something similar last year, I'm doing it again because I need the reminder that it is more important to give than to receive.

Throughout our community and across our nation people are planning and preparing holiday meals for people who can't supply their own Thanksgiving dinner. So it seems a little early to be thinking about Christmas gifts, but because these packages will be shipped overseas they need to be gathered early.

Hundreds of thousands of boxes will be gathered not only here in the USA, but in well-to-do nations all around the globe from people who have "generosity" as their middle name.

We placed in each box a little wooden toy whistle, a mini-slinky, star-shaped sunglasses, a little school tablet and gel pens, glow in the dark bracelets, a bead bracelet, white knit socks, personal packets of Kleenex, a packaged child's toothbrush & paste, some little bars of soap, and a small bottle of lotion. We should have put so much more in them, especially since we realized that the boxes still have room in them, but we need to take them to church tomorrow morning so they can be taken to the local collection center, so I think they are about packed.

Billy Graham's son, Franklin, who heads Samaritan's Purse, has been organizing Operation Christmas Child for the past 17 years. Next weekend all the boxes will be shipped to the SP headquarters in North Carolina and then shipped overseas for delivery at Christmas time to underprivileged children in over 100 countries around the globe.

I think we can't even begin to imagine the disease ridden, poverty stricken, heartache-filled places where some of the world's children reside. The danger they are exposed . . . well . . . I cannot even imagine. Giving a Christmas gift box doesn't seem like much, but for the child who receives it, it is a moment of joy.

There are other things we do throughout the year, but today we are packing Operation Christmas Child packages.

We did one other thing today that was lots of fun, we read and recorded a child's storybook to give as a gift to a little one who is soon to have a birthday. I invited Mr. Fun to read and record it with me and he willingly agreed, but then the remainder of the day he kept mentioning how much he liked doing that. It was just a little thing, but he sure enjoyed it. Actually, I think it says something about how much he likes little kids.

That's it for Saturday. Good night from southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol