Monday, December 19, 2011
Operation Christmas Child- Blessing for Stegall Home
The Magnifiers Sunday School class from Hopewell Baptist Church along with the Christian Crusaders group from Lee Park Baptist Church visited the Operation Christmas Child Distribution Center in Charlotte to work in Candy Land on Monday, Dec. 12th. We had to make a quick pit stop at Chick-fil-A to get our bellies full before beginning our work, but then we quickly got to it! We sorted 3 pieces of candy and 3 rings for each child and sealed them in bags to be placed in the shoeboxes. We worked so quickly on the candy, that we soon ran out and had to resort to folding 4 coloring pages to be placed in the shoeboxes. We were in complete awe of the center and all of the many volunteers. Time was taken out of the sorting, packaging, and shipping to simply lay hands on the boxes and pray over each individual box that it would go the the child that God intended to have it. What an awesome experience that was!
During our orientation and training the leader told us about a specific box that was being gone over to make sure it had appropriate materials and had enough in the box and Operation Christmas Child strongly believes in maintaining the integrity of each box that is sent to them- in this particular box it had a pair of oven mitts, and the volunteer looking through the box was surprised to find oven mitts in a box for a child, but he left them in there and sent the box on its way. When the box arrived at its destination the volunteer handing out the boxes met a young boy that eagerly held out his hands in anticipation of receiving his gift- the volunteer noticed that the boys hands were covered with scars all up and down his arms and he asked the boy what had happened. The boy told him of how his parents run a bakery in town and it is his job to take the items out of the oven and he does this with his bare hands…. well how BIG is our God that the shoebox the boy received would be the shoebox with the oven mitts in it!
God truly uses this ministry to reach those all across the world that are in need and we simply have to be obedient to giving and serving- being His hands and feet! We were so blessed beyond measure to be such a small part of this great organization! We cannot wait for next year and wish to make this a new annual tradition!