Every year our church participates in Operation Christmas Child. It's put on by Samaritan's Purse http://www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC/index/ and they distribute gifts to children all over the world who wouldn't normally get anything for Christmas.
What you do is get a box that's about the size of a shoe box. Fill it with toys and return it so they can ship it.
This year is our first time participating in OCC. Our boys each picked a box at church a week ago. They were asking why we were taking these boxes home, so we asked if they like opening presents on Christmas Day. Of course they all said "yes". We explained that some children don't get to do that because their moms and dads don't have money for presents, or they don't have a mom and dad at all.
They seemed to understand how sad that would be. We asked if they would like to give presents to those children so they'd have something to open on Christmas Day. All three of them said that was something they wanted to do. We then explained that's what the boxes were for.
All week the boys bugged me about shopping for the kids who were getting our boxes. I didn't have time until yesterday. We went to the store together and picked out all sorts of fun stuff to put in the boxes. We chose to give boxes to little boys the same ages as our sons.
Today we sat around the table and packed the boxes up. Each of our boys drew a picture for the boy who will get their box and we included a picture of our family.
We're hoping to continue to do this every year as the boys get older. We think it's a great way to teach them how important it is to be generous.
I'm very proud of how excited our kids were about this and hope they will always feel that way about giving.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
My kids and I have done boxes for soldiers and my parents church does Angel Tree. Love it!
ReplyDelete