One Day a Year

Our family has done Operation Christmas Child every year for the last few years.

If you do not know what that is, it is a program to hand out shoe boxes of stuff to children in third world countries.  You fill up the shoe box with stuff, and then send it off. The group, Samaritan's Purse, sends it with a small book about the love of Jesus.

Every year we buy plastic containers with lids that are the size of shoe boxes. We get 10 of them - 2 for each of us.  We then go to Dollar Tree and load up on anything that is on the list (from the website) and anything extra that looks fun.

When we put the boxes together, we dump out all the stuff in the middle of the floor and get our boxes, and start filling.  The kids love it. As they are putting the stuff in they are saying, "my little girl is going to love this" and, "I like this - I bet they will too."  They also draw pictures to put in so that maybe they will make the box a little more personal.

What do we put in the boxes? Well I made a boy's box and a girl's box this year, both ages 5 to 9.  I had a toothbrush, toothpaste, gloves, stocking cap, pencils, pens, crayons, pencil sharpener, notebook, wash rag, toy cars, a ball, hair ties, various little toys, and hard candy on the top.

At some point in the process, the starkness always hits me. You'd think I would expect it after a while.  When you put a toothbrush in a box and realize this could be the only toothbrush this child will have in their childhood.  The little toys might be the toys they play with for the next couple of years.  And suddenly the cares you had that day don’t seem so bad.  The house with its little problems that you need to get work done on suddenly seems like a mansion.

Never in my life have I had to go to sleep without some kind of heater around, except when I have camped. (Nothing like recreational suffering.)  So maybe this stocking cap will help keep a child a little warmer this winter as they sleep.

This year I noticed an even bigger difference.  We forgot to get pencil sharpeners.  So in this mood of already feeling spoiled, I ran to Walmart.  Do you realize what Walmart seems like when you have the poverty of third world countries on your mind?  It was huge, so much stuff, all shiny and clean.  It ends up making you feel a little dirty that you have access to so much while so many have so little.

So this year I am going to try to hold on to these feeling a little longer.  To remember how lucky I am to live in this country and how doing small things can help people in big ways.

- Mark