Shoebox Fun

We love shopping for our Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes. We love the opportunity to remind our children (and ourselves) about the importance of giving to others. We spent one evening a few weeks ago at the Dollar Tree picking out all kinds of goodies to pack into our shoeboxes. The night before the collection day at church, we pulled all the boxes, the presents and began packing.

We began by packing candy into our personalized mugs. We found the "decorate-you-own-cups" and included a picture of our family on the mugs. Then we began the assembly line. We had all the goodies divided out into piles and had the kids fill their boxes. We took one pile and passed it from child to child with everyone picking out one of the items for their boxes. It worked pretty well, after Xander got the hang of the process.

After the boxes were filled, we took some time to pray over them, their trips and the children who would be receiving the boxes. It was precious to hear all the kids pray over the shoeboxes they had filled.

It took a little finagling to fit everything into the boxes and be able to close the tops. We're trying something new this year - we payed the "shipping costs" for the shoeboxes online. This allowed us to print out a shipping label with a bar code. The bar code can be scanned so we can see where our boxes arrive. We can't wait to see their destinations. We turned in most of our boxes to our church, but we kept three out for our trip down to the shoebox collection facility. We are really looking forward to that visit. What a blessing this night was for our family!!