Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Party!

'Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows...' James 1:27

This is our 2nd year to participate in Operation Christmas Child. We are so blessed by this oppurtunity.
Last year, I shopped for the box and the girls just put the items in.
This year, I not only took them with me but they each contributed $5 of their OWN money to buy stuff for an unknown 5-9 yr old girl somewhere in the world.
They also paid the shipping cost and were THRILLED with the fact that this box was COMPLETELY from them.

This year, the homeschool group we belong to put on a 'Shoebox party'. We all gathered at a church, brought our shoeboxes, and food to share from a different place and any artifacts, jewelry, pictures or money to share from a different country.

In this picture we are getting ready to pray over the shoeboxes. We watched an Operation Christmas child video and it took all my strength to not end up a blubbery mess at the end!

Oh those sweet children!!

Here's all the kiddos (minus a few little ones) w/ the shoeboxes...

The gal who spearheaded this did SUCH a good job. There were 2 tables for each continent. One table held artifacts/pictures etc from that continent and the other had an activity to do. The kids were also given a map of the world. Once they had completed an activity, they would put a star on that continent....

Here they are doing origami animals for Asia...

Face painting from Africa....

Oreo penguins for Antarctica....

Kangaroo sack races for Australia...

Igloo building for North America...

'Dutch pins' (bowling basically) for Europe...

(There was also 'futbol' for South America, but I somehow didnt get a pic of that)

That whole counter was full of food from different places....

YUMMY!!!!

I cant wait til my girls are a little older and we can volunteer at the distribution center. I have always had a BIG heart for giving and helping the less fortunate and I cant wait to share that passion w/ my girls =)