Order Out of Chaos!

Almost 20 years ago, I became involved with a project called "Operation Christmas Child"  OCC as it is commonly known sends gift filled shoeboxes to children in need all over the world. Shoebox gifts contain; school supplies, personal care items, small toys, hard candy and more and for some children are the first and sometimes only gift they will ever receive in their lives.

My involvement with OCC expanded to becoming a project leader and then finally an Area Coordinator for our area. I currently oversee a project called "Shoebox 1k" named from a challenge one of the boys in my children's ministry issued one year to do "A THOUSAND BOXES." Currently just working on our third year, news of our project has spread far and wide. Being the case we need LOTS of storage space. In the past I was able to have a back room in our church building, when the building was sold, the Christian Youth Center of Morris graciously allowed me to move the operation in there.

Naturally when one thinks of filling 1000 shoebox gifts you would think about how many supplies are needed to accomplish this goal. Our packing date is November 1 and being close to the date of our packing party obviously have mountains of supplies to accomplish our goal. Imagine my surprise and dread when I was notified, I had to MOVE everything over two bays in the storage area less than one month before everything was to be moved out?

Rather than just putting everything into piles in the new area, I enlisted the help of my father, my son and some other fine gentlemen to create a shelving unit able to withstand not only the amount of supplies we would need in for our project but the weight of cartons of shoeboxes. School supplies, and cartons of soap aren't light!

 It took the 5 of us 2 days and several hundred dollars of donated wood and screws to create the shelves. But the result was oh so worth it! There are 6 sets of shelves 8 feet by 4 feet. In addition we created two sorting tables, that can double as supply tables during the actual shoebox packing party!  I love the new space, and it should make it very easy to stay organized this next year.

A HUGE thank you to my father Ken, my son David, and friends Mike and Ed for all of their hard work!!!

(For more information on Shoebox 1k and how you can get involved in our local efforts, check out the link above or click on "Shoebox 1k" at the top menu.)