It's Christmas!

Well...so it's about a month and some days away from the actual day we celebrate Christmas but in our apartment this past weekend, it surely seemed like Christmas sans the Christmas tree I guess.

I'm a firm believer in putting my time and my money where my heart is. As you've read...my heart is with the kids of Timothy Project.  A couple weeks ago, I pitched the idea of shoebox Christmas (or did I just develop it).  The point is, I felt very strongly that each child should have something to open on Christmas (since they celebrate Christmas) AND to push the limit, this shouldn't be something that the community supports. It should come from the members of the Timothy Project team.

The catch is, there are currently 26 children apart of Timothy Guyana and maybe about 10 non-Guyanese members...this inevitably meant...some of us were going to have to take more than just one kid. Because the majority of the members are in fact unemployed full-time students, we set a very reasonable cap for this initiative and made the announcement. It was well received and we had some members who took as many as 6 kids!?! 

Awesomeness!

Star giftwrapper, your truly, ended up having to wrap about 70%  of the gifts which was interesting in and of itself because the boxes couldn't be sealed. This occured Friday night after we drove around collecting the gifts (reverse-Santa). Then, the next day, we drove 8 hours (4 hours each leg) to Toronto to drop off the gifts and send them off...

Fun times indeed. Here are some pics from the two days...

boxes all stuffed and wrapped and ready to be loaded in the car

Schantal's back trunk...looking a lot like Christmas!

last minute finishing touches

 we had to get creative with some of the boxes that didn't have a top that came off, so we wrapped the bottom and then tied it all together with a lovely bow.  Those are what you see on the top of the box as we began to pack it...

This process was also interesting. We had planned to purchase a barrell but with all these boxes that was not going to work. However, there was another option...a large cardboard box which worked out to be about the same cost and maybe get there a couple days earlier. The box was the largest they had and we had maybe about 1-2 inches of space left. 

Definitely a God-thing since we just let everyone find their own shoeboxes.

 The ride back was nice. It was a beautiful Fall day. I felt this truck was smiling at us.

And as we got closer home, the sunset was our guide

...just look at the beauty of what our God made!

Grace peace and love,

Gia