I really enjoy our church’s project of packing boxes to ship to our soldiers serving overseas.  Today was our fourth time to gather together to pack boxes.  Today we put together a record of FORTY-EIGHT boxes!  That means that forty-eight soldiers serving in Iraq will receive a package from us within a few weeks.   Each box included a letter, a CD, a box of Girl Scout cookies, a bag of candy, beef jerky, notepad and pens, magazine(s), various toiletries, packages of crackers and granola bars, individual packs of pudding, hot chocolate mix and other goodies. 

I was particularly blessed by how everyone stepped in wherever they were needed - whether it was manning the tape dispenser to put boxes together, packing the boxes, addressing labels, bagging candy or q-tips, gathering up all the trash, writing letters, sealing boxes, matching up box labels with customs forms - and so many other things.  Whatever needed to be done - someone stepped up to do it.  I loved watching the children who so enthusiastically participated.  They were so proud of the boxes they packed - along with the letters they wrote.  Sweet Stuff came to church with us again today so she could help with the boxes.  She has taken a personal interest in doing this project with us.

We will plan to do this again in May.  In the meantime, we will start collecting items again for that next shipment.  We already have enough boxes and customs forms for the next shipment.  So everyone will be looking for sales on items that our soldiers will appreciate. 

I’m getting this down to a science now - knowing the items that ship best, organizing everything so that the packing will go smoothly, and making sure that we have all the supplies we need.  However, obviously I don’t have it down exactly because I thought we’d probably pack around 30 - 35 boxes today - but we wound up with 48 very full boxes by the end of the session.

Oh yes, I also got up early this morning and made a pot of chicken and dumplings, along with a pot of chili - and took them to church with me.  Everyone who helped with the packages had their lunch provided - and there was not a drop of either soups left over.  And that made me feel good, too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Our Military, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.