Saturday was a big "Packing Party" for Operation Christmas Child through the organization Samaritan's Purse. What they do is collect and send shoeboxes filled with toys, hygiene items, school supplies, and candy to children around the world in time for Christmas. The wonderful part about it is that anyone can pack a shoebox for the kids and personalize it.
My mom had my niece Grace (6) and nephew Ian (12) both fill shoeboxes before we went to the event; they filled them for another little girl and boy and wrapped the boxes.
The Packing Party event itself also had ALL kinds of supplies and toys for people to go there and pack more boxes. Gymboree donated thousands of cute little girls' pajamas.
Other people donated tons of other things: toothbrushes and toothpaste, coloring books, toys, stuffed animals, pencils and pens, notebooks, soaps. They had it set up so that you started with a box and went around to every table to pack the box filled with things for a little boy or a little girl.
Then we were able to write a letter and put it in the box telling the child something about ourselves.
We then prayed over the boxes and got them ready to send. While we were there they breached the 3,000 box mark, and that was only for our location! It's such a great cause and I'm so happy that these children who may not have received gifts this Christmas will get something from someone, even someone that they've never met. It was also great for Grace and Ian and the other children there to think about giving to someone else this Christmas.
It is National Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child, which means there's still time to get a shoebox packed and dropped off at a location.
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/index/
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