Planning Ahead

I love the Christmas season. I love the chance to celebrate our Savior's birth. I love the opportunities to get together with friends and family. I love giving gifts. I love doing all the little festivities and events that we do each year. As Craig and I were walking through a store last week, I saw the Christmas decorations out and I couldn't help but get just a bit excited. However, we do wait until after Thanksgiving to pull down our decorations, so I'll just have to contain my Christmas excitement.

There is one Christmas tradition that we can participate in before the "official" kick-off of the season - Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. We have made shoeboxes for underprivileged children for many, many years and we love trying to pack the boxes as full as we can. We just picked up our boxes to fill this week, so it's not time to post those pictures yet, but we did get an exciting invitation.

On December 7, we will be participating in a very special family day down at the Atlanta Processing Center for the shoeboxes. Craig has gone down with the youth to help in the center in years past, but the kids and I have never been down. One of our friends went to this family day last year and I heard that it was a great experience. Knowing that it would fill up quickly, I called to schedule our time within 15 minutes of receiving the postcard. I am really looking forward to seeing the next step after we fill our boxes.

I would encourage each of you to be part of this exciting ministry. It's fun to fill a shoebox with small items that mean the world to a special child. Plus, the children also get to hear about the love of God!! That alone is truly priceless!!