Pics from Operation Christmas Child Project

As written about previously, we did an Operation Christmas Child missions project in our high school.  Two local ladies with children in our school are very committed to this project, so we signed on to help them.  At first we were going to try to incorporate the entire school, but because of a communications gap, the elementary had already begun another project.  As it turned out, that may have been for the best, because we had our hands full just managing all that was brought in by the high school.

We started out having a contest (grades 7-12) for one month, for bringing things in.  I'm not crazy about contests for missions projects, but the reward for this one made it a little more palatable - The winning class got to choose a class to miss in order to pack boxes.  We roughly made $1 worth of anything worth one point.  They were asked to bring in items for the boxes, as well as money (each box is supposed to have $7 attached for transportation costs to the countries), empty shoe boxes, and wrapping supplies.  

Each day I took a cart around to each homeroom and collected the day's bounty.  Pictured below is some of what we collected.  Some classes really took to this and others - well, not so much.  Winning class was the seniors, with over 1200 points; and second was the freshmen with almost 1100 points.  Unbelievable for young people this age. 

All month I allowed girls in my study hall to go wrap boxes when their homework was done.  Lids had to be wrapped separately from the boxes.  (FYI, those boxes with the attached flap-style lids are very difficult to wrap.)

The day of the packing, some students commandeered the choir room to try to get the rest of the boxes wrapped for filling:

Seniors going down the line, gathering age-appropriate and gender-appropriate items for their boxes.  They chose my class to miss.  (Why would they want to miss a day of studying MACBETH?)  Since the ninth grade did so well, even without being able to drive or having jobs, we let them miss a class also to work on boxes.  They got out of algebra to finish the job.

Many of our high school students, showing off the boxes that they brought items in to fill:

 

And the final product. 167 total boxes full of socks, toothpaste, soap, washcloths, small toys, underwear, T-shirts, pens, pencils, tablets, puzzle books, clothing items, candy, and other useful and fun items.  The OCC people will add a Bible booklet/tract in the appropriate language to each box.

We also had just the right amount of $$ collected, and donated from another project, to have the $7 per box they ask for.

 It was a very good missions project for our high school students.