Makes: Operation Christmas Child

 
This week I made a Boutique Granny Stripe Bag (Tangled Happy) for our Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child shoebox gift.

I've been doing a shoebox gift almost every year since high school; it's a great way to keep perspective going in to the Christmas season.  These kids won't get any Christmas presents besides through the Operation Christmas Child program.  And Samaritan's Purse gives more than just the gifts, they follow up with the kids and teach them the true meaning of Christmas.

If you want to give a shoebox gift, it's super easy, and it's always a lot of fun!

I usually go to the dollar store, to keep the bill down.  I got a reusable "shoe" box, and, as it suggests on the site,  some school supplies (a notebook, mechanical pencils, solar calculator), some hygiene items (toothbrush, toothpaste, soap), and lots of fun stuff (flip-flops, hair ties, hair bands, glow sticks, a flashlight with extra batteries, a solar moving flower toy, a klick-klack wooden toy, a jump rope, stickers, hard candies, and, of course, the awesome crochet bag!).  All of that cost about $18, so with the $7 donation for shipping, my total came to only about $25!

I love to imagine what a fun gift this will be for a girl, and this year my #1 can understand it, too.  We really enjoyed picking things, thinking about the girl who gets our shoebox.

And because we made the shipping donation online, we can track our gift.  We printed out our tag with a barcode on it which will be scanned and the destination country will be emailed to us.  It will be so interesting to find out where our gift is headed!  With the tag and a rubber band around the box, we are ready to take it to the drop-off location this week, Nov. 14-21.

What a great gift God gave to us when he sent his son as a baby to earth.  Giving a gift to someone in need is a little expression of our thanks to him.