Operation Christmas Child

YEAAAH YEAAH YEAAAH.
I LOVE EXAM TIME. 

Maybe it's because usually I have so much happening in my weeks normally, this time when exam time pulled around I felt like I had copious amounts of excess time to spend doing everything BUT study.

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Recently I did some volunteer work with an organisation called Samaritan's Purse - an organisation which you may or may not have come into contact with. One of their more well-known projects around this time of year is 'Operation Christmas Child'.

Check it out here: operationchristmaschild.org.au

If you haven't heard about what they do, basically every year over the pre-Christmas period they send shoeboxes which filled with donated gifts to send over to young kids who live in developing countries in South-East Asia and Pacific.They go about doing this is though either: receiving money from members of the public for the organisation to send a shoebox on behalf of them or; people can prepare their own personalised shoebox for a child and just pay for shipping costs!

cool right?

I actually did none of the above things and just went down to the processing centre in Mitcham along with a few other guys to help out there for a few hours.

Training started at 9 and processing began at 9:30. My friend and I arrived late because we had slighly underestimated how long traffic would take to get there and so, by the time we arrived and filled in all the mandatory paperwork, we'd missed most of the training. haha. whooops.

After 3 hrs we'd almost done 2 trays. 

The process was quite simple:
1. Collect and open box, check contents to make sure everything is new
2. Remove prohibited items
3. Check that each content category is there
4. Fill the box up with donated fillers and toys if it isn't already at exploding point
5. Place it on the processing belt to be sealed

Each box needed to contain something to love, something for hygeine, something for school, something to play with, something cool and something to wear inside. It was fun seeing what people had thoughtfully put into each and every shoebox. Also, omgosh, the number of people who had put in coloured pencils and notepads without putting in sharpeners. haha - facepalm-

Even I was jealous of some of the boxes kids were recieving. haha. 

After the first half an hour it became a running competition between Bel and I  to see who could stuff the biggest toy into the shoebox without compromising it's integrity.

If there was more time, I probably would have been happy to say the entire day because it was really chill and unexpectedly enjoyable. But we all had exam study to attend to *sigh*.
Before leaving however, we did manage to pick up a few things from the discounted goods area made up of things that were either prohibited or not appropriate for gifts to the kids. I picked up a cute apron for my mum and two decks of Queens Slipper playing cards for $1 to take to Summer Project (yeah, apparently cards encourage gambling).

Defs one to do with friends if you ever get the chance.

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Sometimes we forget how lucky we are to be living in this part of the world. 
We lust after materialistic things we don't even need every day, forgetting to appreciate the simple joys and the very things we have before us. 

Don't submit to the #FOMO.
1 Sam 8:1-22