Vision beyond borders - Seeds!

If you didn't already watch the YouTube video I posted yesterday, I hope you will go back and do that. It is about Vision Beyond Borders, a remarkable organization.

Our congregation has become increasingly active this year and many of the things we do, we do as a group of all ages. It has been really quite wonderful! I love it most when we are doing something for the good of others. Our congregation helps many organizations and our last project was to help Vision Beyond Borders.

Vision Beyond Border's main mission  is to deliver Bibles to countries around the world where people do not have access to Bibles. They deliver Bibles in the native language and in some instances that means hand-wind tape players to deliver the Gospel message to those who can not read.  They are often putting themselves in danger in order to do this! They have already delivered over 1 million Bibles!

They are often witness to many great needs and because of this, they have taken on other tasks as well. They partner along side Christians in other countries to accomplish many goals. One is to help women and children escape from the slave trade. Patrick Klein, founder, was telling me yesterday about an owner of a large brothel becoming a Christian and freeing those enslaved under her. They help provide safe houses as well as training for other ways to earn money.

One of their projects that we were able to be a part of this week-end is their seed project.

They have found that many are in need of seeds to use to grow things for their own food as well as to sell. When I went to church Saturday to package seeds, I really didn't understand what a big deal this is. Our church had stacks and stacks of boxes (54 of them) and each box was loaded with unsold seeds donated by seed companies.  Each box was stuffed with seed packets...80,000 of them!  Due to customs restrictions they are not able to take those packets into all countries. Our seeds were bound for Cuba. So, we had to repackage them into baggies.

Here's how that is accomplished...

We each had a cup and we'd line it with a baggie. We'd then open 10 matching seed packets and cut out the label from one of those packets to include in the baggie, seal and repeat. They were then grouped with like seeds and boxed up for delivery to Cubans in need. A large group of us worked on that all day Saturday and still did not quite complete our task!

Sunday after church Patrick Klein was telling me a story
about visiting a man some time after he'd received seeds
from Vision Beyond Borders. The man was standing proudly by his rows of carrots that were just coming up and he was
so happy, he was crying.

I can go to the store and buy seeds anytime I want.  It was
a good reminder to appreciate all that we have.

Vision Beyond Borders is an amazing organization. If you are interested in learning more, maybe even want to be a small part of it, please click here.

Operation Christmas Child

Tonight was fun.  Our congregation pulled together for a very important purpose. We were packing boxes for Operation Christmas Child!  Click on that link to learn more about this project. It is BIG! Boxes are sent all over the world to give to children who likely would have no Christmas gifts otherwise. My friend, Nicole, is the driving force behind our church's efforts to contribute to this project.

She had a group of well organized helpers who had done a lot of prep work to have things ready. In fact, last week we had a pre-packing party where we used baggies to organize health kits, candy bags, school kits, etc. Those items were then included on the tables lined up with lots and lots of presents for children of various ages. Everything as so well organized!

These gift items were all donated by people from our church. We have a very, very generous congregation and they've been donating for this project now for some time.

We gathered for pizza while the last preparations were made. I particularly liked the taped arrows around the church building. It was set up so we could pick up a box, write a note and trace our hand on the inside lid of the box, add some tissue paper, a bag of candy, a bag of school supplies, a bag of hygiene items such as toothbrushes, cloth, soap,etc,  Once we hand those things in our box we got to choose if a path to go by tables sorted by items appropriate for either younger children, older children or those in between.

Before we ever began, though, we gathered to pray for those who would receive our boxes of gifts.  Once we started, it went pretty quickly because there were a lot of us there. Nicole had told us Sunday that she needed "all hands on deck" and that is exactly what she got! We just lined up and took a box past each station. It was fun to choose the toys or other items we added to our box. When complete, we took the to the table of helpers who added a label. They passed the boxes back to others who rubber banded them and put them into bigger boxes and eventually into our church van/trailer for transportation to the collection point. We just kept the line going, each of us doing several boxes.

It was kind of like shopping as we chose what items to put in our boxes.

I choose to not publish photos of the children there, but they ranged from about age 3 on up. Its was great!

In about an hour's time we had packed 335 boxes loaded with surprises for children all around the world!  Another congregation here in town helped with the effort and brought over 40 more boxes to add to our efforts. What a great project!