Advent Conspiracy Project #1

For many years Felida has been participating in Operation Christmas Child - a program through Samaritan's Purse. This past weekend was our packing party at the church and it was so incredible!

In the early days we would do a couple hundred boxes and think we were doing alright. We would send out the challenge to families to pack boxes and bring them to the church ready to go. That had changed a few years back and we decided to be very intentional about making this program the best that we could make it.

Throughout the year items would be collected and stored until the big day. In recent years we have sent out messages on the church website that would alert members of sales of items that we would be collecting that particular day and by November we had just about everything that was needed - including shoe boxes. I don't know who all is buying shoes, because I know I may have contributed one or two boxes this year and with 200+ regular weekly attenders, it's hard to say just WHO is bring all those shoe boxes in...hmmmm....

SO - At our 2010 party we partnered with another small church and we exceeded the goal that we set for last year and packed over 600. Someone decided to dream big and said that we would pack 750 boxes this year.

November 19th was the day and volunteers and so many people from our church family showed up and we ended up with a grand total of 786 boxes!!!!

Seven Hundred Eighty Six...that many kids all around the world will be receiving one of those gifts that was so lovingly and enthusiastically packed by a member of our church...so amazing! Each box was prayed for and we continue to pray for the children who will receive a gift this year. God is so good!

What I love about this video the most....this VERY excited boy hasn't even OPENED the box yet. Can you imagine what THAT would look like?!

Go God Go!

2011 Advent Conspiracy

More to come...enjoy the video!

Operation Christmas Child

Tom and I spent a couple of hours at the church helping pack boxes for Operation Christmas child...a total of 559 boxes were packed!!! Trinity Baptist Church joined us this year and they plan to join us again next year and the goal for 2011, ONE THOUSAND boxes...Go God Go!

Create a photo album

Advent Conspiracy 2009

More to come...

Advent Conspiracy, Part 4

Today was our final AC event...Lighten the Load.

Felida had a 40 yard dumpster delivered to the church parking lot so that people that live in neighborhoods around us could take advantage of dumping their stuff at no cost. There were a couple of people that asked if we wanted donations and we said NO...just your stuff. Most of the stuff was truly garbage, but there were some items that could be taken to Good Will, cardboard to be recycled and steel that could be sold. The morning was pretty chilly and I think that now, hours later, I'm still thawing out! We had a few people show up to help out - I was supposed to walk around the neighborhoods and pick-up garbage, but I didn't want to wander around by myself - it was more fun visiting with my buddies!

A cool beginning to our morning of accepting junk, trash, garbage etc...

OOH...JUNK!!!

Jenni our very own barista

Sammy & Sally arrive to take over the coffee duties

Advent Conspiracy, Part 3

The cool thing about this Christmas is that we started thinking about it a few months ago when Advent Conspiracy was first introduced to the church. The focus has been to Worship More, Spend Less (on gifts), Give More (of ourselves) and Love All. Since the beginning of the school year we have heard a few messages from Pastor Scott about AC and had 3 different projects presented that we all, as a church, can participate in.

The first was Operation Christmas Child - which we did on November 8. See my previous post on this one....our final total for the morning was 376 boxes and raised more money than needed for shipping (an amount which escapes me now) - in this way we gave of ourselves and our resources.

Our second project will be the H2O project. This coming Sunday there will be a special offering for AC and all the funds that are donated will go to Living Water International so that a water source can be provided for a community that does not have clean running water for drinking, cooking, bathing etc. - this way is from spending less (or in Tom's case working more)

Project #3 will be in January...more details on that later.

As for Christmas here at home Tom and I are spending less on each other and we have decided to exchange 3 gifts each with a spending limit of $100. I got the idea of 3 gifts from our medical supplies rep that visits the station occasionally - and he is a Christian incidently. Last Christmas as we were visiting he shared with me how he and his family have been celebrating christmas and the gift thing really stuck with me. He and his wife have always given their boys 3 gifts each to represent the Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh that were brought to Jesus at his birth. Very cool! I'll have to let Chad know when he comes in next time how we changed our gift giving this year.

Today is my day to shop for Tom and I have everything all planned out - the weather looks like it will cooperate so that won't slow me down.

O.C.C.

Operation Christmas Child 2008

Goal - 350 shoe boxes Actual - 371 shoe boxes

All year long Felida members and regular attenders have been bringing in items (toys, clothes, toiletries etc) for this packing party which took place yesterday, November 8.

The fun part of this event is watching the kids packing boxes for kids that will receive these boxes and how proud they were to present their choices to the volunteers helping to keep things in order. Another fun thing was that even the teenagers were helping out - which is really cool. They could easily be hanging out with their friends, but really, on a rainy day what would their be to do?

We easily reached our goal within the two hours that was alloted to fill the box and we had more stuff leftover, but not enough essential items to continue filling boxes.

Here are a few shots of the morning

Helloooooo Mary!
Me taking a picture of Scott taking a picture of me...

Happy Felida Elves...

Me & Lila Scheer