Samaritan's Purse

This past Wednesday night, I drove down to Burnsville with a large crew of confirmation youth and volunteer adults. We went to this huge building that turns into Samaritan's Purse each year at Christmas and volunteered for over 2 hours. People from all over the country put together shoe boxes filled with toys and health supplies for kids. And they somehow all end up in Burnsville before being packaged and shipped to kids all over the world. It was really quite fun! We were set up in production lines, going through each box to make sure that no liquids (spills are bad), no chocolate (it melts) and no war toys (too many children live in violent regions of the world - teddy bears are better options!) ended up in the boxes before they got into the hands of children. The youth took this quite seriously, knowing that if they missed a bottle of shampoo, it could wreck all of the toys in the box. We went through hundreds of boxes. Often, the boxes included notes from the people who sent them. One box I was going through had a picture of a couple, along with the note. Lo and behold, they had the same last name as me, and live in North Dakota! I thought it was so neat to run across a couple who I just might be related to, through this small Christmas gift box. Who knows if they were blood relatives or not - they were family just the same - part of the family of God who is trying to make the world a better place for some unknown child in an unknown part of the world. Thank God for all the people who love those they don't know and try to make the world more liveable!
Last Wednesday night was one of the best Advent gifts I received.