These are the children that our Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes are going to be delivered to. This photo is from the Fiji Times, a couple of years ago. You can read the full newspaper article here.
With the dolls made and the shoe boxes decorated, it was with a happy heart that the kids and I sealed up our two shoe boxes on Friday morning and delivered them to our teacher at school.
These boxes will be distributed to parts of the South Pacific and Asia by the organisation, Samaritan's Purse. The boxes are to be delivered to children in need, for Christmas.
We chose to put together one box for a girl and one for a boy (5 years old) In it we put:
• A special doll - made with much love
• An undies and singlet set (Dora and Ben 10)
• A notebook, colour pencils, textas, a rubber, sticky tape, glue, a sharpener, some craft cut outs, stickers, chalk and a pencil case.
• A toothbrush (one Spiderman, one Ariel), a washer (one fairy, one frog) and a handmade soap. Scrunchies and fairy hairclips for the girl.
• A barbie, a forklift truck, some matchbox cars.
I really loved shopping with the kids to fill these boxes. They picked out the items, mindful that it was for someone less fortunate than them. They made suggestions of what the kids might want. They really liked watching the videos of the children receiving the gifts on the Operation Christmas Child website. I think it made it more real for them.
Our boxes ready to go. I wish I could have packed up fifty.
PS: I have a little tip on covering shoe boxes. Don't do it! I think it took longer to cover two shoe boxes with brown paper than it did to make the two dolls.
PPS: I'm sorry, I didn't write about this sooner so that you could have been involved too. Like I said in a previous post, I had left this until the eleventh hour (the very last week) to even do anything about it. But now you know, there is no excuse for you not to be involved next year.
