Our Operation Christmas Child Shoe Boxes

I love giving and decided this year our family would participate in Samaritans Purse Operation Christmas Child.  Our Church LCBC encourages the congregation to fill shoe boxes, a man from Uganda came to our church and spoke about his childhood.  He told  his story of the poverty in his village where he lived, his mental state.  When he was 8 years old he was sponsored by a teenager through Compassion International, it was so amazing to hear him talk about all the ways it changed his life. While my family has not been nearly as close to poverty as this man, two years ago my husband had been laid off from his employer of seven years. Our finances took a massive hit that year and our children received some gifts from a local church at Christmas.  The congregation provided amazing gifts of toys, art supplies, coats, clothing, a beautiful handmade twin sized bed quilt and groceries, including a gift card to a local supermarket.  We were so overwhelmed by the love and generosity that year from everyone and now we are always looking for ways to help others in need.  I home school our girls and thought Operation Christmas Child would be a great learning experience for them and we prepared two shoe boxes for two little girls, age 4 years old.  I came across a wonderful blog post written by The Dohls called Unsolicitated Advice About Shoeboxes.  

First, I visited our local dollar tree and picked up basic supplies, but avoided anything too inexpensively made or easily breakable.  I spent about $20 total for two of the following: 
Soap
Toothbrush and travel case
Toothpaste
Washcloth
Hand towel
Crayons
Sketch pad
Bandaids
Hair elastics

Then, I went to Kmart, spending about $40 on two of the following:
Baby doll
My little pony
Travel soap case
LED flashlight
3 extra AAA batteries
Travel tissues
Wide tooth comb

Lastly, I stopped at Target, spending about $14 on two of the following:
Plain tank top
Lollipops (dum dums are my kids favorite)
Chapstick
Quality kids plate and bowl

In all I spent $74 on both boxes, thats $37 for each child.  I will also register my boxes online and pay the shipping fee of $7 per shoebox, hopefully we will receive information on where our box was delivered.  I manged to pack everything into the boxes without room to spare anywhere and used plastic shoe boxes, I rubber banded them shut and used packing tape to hold them closed around the middle.  I let the girls each decorate a card, included the sediments of One Love and our return address in hopes of receiving a letter from the children we blessed this year.  As I packed each box I talked about each item with my girls and answered questions about the child that might receive our box and watched a video about Danniellas Story.  When we finished our discussion of conditions in other countries and why we were sending these boxes off full of toys and everyday items, I could see their brains and hearts making the connection.  They were so happy and excited for this little girl receiving our box.  A perfect lesson on humanitarianism for my girls.  

One Love.