We met a group of our FIAR homeschool friends.
We arrived at the warehouse and went through training to learn of the various jobs.
I was incredibly moved to see that one of the locations for which the boxes were being packed was the Ukraine. I have been praying for children there for years now and love knowing that some of them will be blessed by these boxes.
After our training, we were than taking to a line to wait for our instructions. We were split up into several groups. I went with Rebecca and Daniel into the shoebox hospital.
For the boxes that have been damaged, they are repacked into new boxes. We found that there was one particular box that didn't hold up well and we repacked many of these. The three of us worked hard with a goal of emptying a large "box" of them. As more and more kept being added to the pile - growing from one to two - we changed our goal.
We then just worked to fill up new "boxes" with repaired shoeboxes.
While we were at the hospital, the rest of the group had various other jobs from breaking down boxes,
Some of what I loved about the day was the Christian music playing in the background and the prayers said for the workers and for those who would be receiving the boxes. The really neat part though was hearing the stories of the impact these boxes have on the lives of others. We heard one story of an ENTIRE family coming to know the love of Jesus due to ONE shoebox! Isn't that amazing ... and humbling?! We prayed over the boxes as we worked. To think that we were serving as missionaries in that spot was a blessing. I loved the stories too of how the contents of a box specifically blessed a child. Often there are "unusual" things or even large quantities of a specific thing. To hear of how God hand-picked these items for the child that would receive them is incredible.
This is a great ministry and I'm thankful we had the opportunity to serve with them.
Blessings
Leslie
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Sounds like a good time. I was wondering what the offensive items were that had to be taken out, just to help with future box prep.
ReplyDeleteJasmine,
ReplyDeleteSome of the items were offensive "ONLY" to the restricted access countries. Because these were muslim areas, they wanted to be sensitive to that. If these items were in a box, then they just didn't send them to those countries, kwim? So, it isn't that these are bad for all boxes, just these special ones that were being done that day. Does this make sense?
Some of the items that weren't sent to the special access countries included religious materials of any kind, anything patriotic, anything with Piglet on it. That type of thing. Please know it is fine to include these in the boxes though!
Hugs
Leslie