It's Shoe Box Time!

It's Shoe Box time! It's my favorite and busiest time of the year but I wouldn't change a thing about it. Since 2001, LAOG has participated in Operation Christmas Child (OCC) developed and organized by Samaritans Purse. It's a simple 'shoe box' ministry. People fill shoe boxes with school supplies,books, personal hygiene supplies, toys and clothing and Samaritans Purse sends them to children in 100 nations around the world. Since 1993 when this project started, 61 million shoe boxes have been delivered to children around the world.

Come along for the ride as we begin our 2009 Shoe Box story....

Since I have never been able to back up my lawn-mower with a trailer on the back, I am grateful that my husband Charlie did the driving and backing up and I simply acted as traffic cop.


The Rockport Company again donated the shoe boxes and were ready for us. So I didn't have to wait very long before the cases of shoe boxes started to fill up the truck and trailer.

Before you know it, we were loaded up with 30 cases of shoe boxes.

Getting the shoe boxes in cases makes it so easy to load, unload, to bring into church for setting up. We'll be sure to keep the cases and fill them with our donated shoe boxes to get them to our drop off center. We've learned lots about this process over the years and are so very grateful.
Having the shoe boxes donated has made a world of difference in a whole host of ways. I can't even imagine what it might be like if we had to go back in time with everyone having to come up with their own shoe boxes.

After filling up and saying our 'Thank You and good-bye', we headed back to church on a picture perfect fall day here in New England. How beautiful a day and how good our God is to us.

After everyone helped unloading the trailer and things quieted down, I began to get our display set for for our OCC launch this coming Sunday morning when I am privileged to speak at both services.

Check it out! Four cases of shoe boxes , stacked and ready for people to grab on their way out of church.



This shoe box filled for a little girl , somewhere on the other side of the world, will be delivered with the gospel message of how Jesus loves her and the Salvation message!

Watch for some additional postings about Operation Christmas Child over the next few weeks. Our goal this year is to fill and deliver 400 boxes! I'll be sure to let you see what our Dedication Sunday looks like on Nov. 8 and the organized chaos that follows after service when we open and check boxes, and prepare them for shipping!

Striving to walk 'In line with The Word',
Sally

Fond Memories Made

In so many ways , it's been a typical busy Summer! But now, we are back on our normal schedule. We decided to gather the 'In Line With The Word' home team for some food, fun and fellowship to mark the end of the Summer and to transition into our new Fall studies!

Dutch served as official 'greeter' and he did a great job!

Kim's mom Doris became an official member of our team. We are delighted and know that we'll benefit greatly from her wisdom. She'll be with us for a few weeks until she flies away to Florida for the Winter. We'll save her seat until she returns next Spring. She's a delight and she didn't even mind all of the noise.

Pastor Harv and Jean joined us as our very special guests. Pastor Harv is our adviser and we were delighted to share our evening with them.

We all enjoyed a great meal but we still had a very special job to do....

Since we had more buddy boxes to fill, most likely our last batch sent over to Doug in Afghanistan, we had notes to write and sign. We put cards and a photo of our team in each box shipped.

We had lots of fun and everyone helped.

Jay does his best work helping while sitting on the sideline and cheering everyone on.

We had lots to pack !

Check out Laurie and Brian's great teamwork.

When done, we had 6 more boxes, just waiting for our team photo to be added and then off to the Post Office for the start of their journey to Afghanistan!

The guys managed to get away to check out the Tivo of Monday Night Football. It was a Patriot's win after all.

Happy Birthday Doris!

D.J. even took a break from doing his homework and joined us for a while. All in all, it was a delightful evening. Next week , we begin a two week audio theater presentation entitled

'Rescued' by John Bevere!

Until the next time, we strive to live our lives In Line With The Word,
Sally