Change the World One Box At a Time

One of the things you may not know is that absolutely no one on the national team is paid. For every single person it is completely volunteer...most of them having families at home to support and a full time job. They have things happening in their lives like a wife with cancer, a child that passed away, and not enough money to keep a house. Yet through all their turmoil and troubles, they saw that the kids are the ones they should be there for. I believe that the devil will only seek to knock down what he finds threatening.... Therefor do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).....So this is my challenge to you, give up a weeks worth of coffee, Krispy Kreme donuts or whatever your vice is, and pack double the amount of boxes that you did last year! With your help we can see a box in the hands of every child in need and spread the word of God!!

Philly

Today we got caught in the rain.... And by rain I mean downpour! 

And of course we couldn't go to Philly and not have a Philly cheesesteak! 

And to top off our last night of vacation, we stopped at 3 different places for frozen yogurt :)

How I love eating whatever you want since your on vacation!!!

Philadelphia

I can definitely say I like Philadelphia better than NYC! The people here are a bit nicer and its not as busy! We got to do some site seeing yesterday....

The liberty bell

Went to the printing press

Then went to this huge indoor mall type food court... I don't really know how to explain it but it was huge!! 

Sleep please

This morning we got up at 2am to be to the airport by 3, traveled the 4 hours to Tokyo, time traveled the 13 hours to JFK, spent 2 hours going through customs, met mom and dad at the airport and now we are on our way to Philadelphia. It has been a lot of butt time and I'm ready for a bed... Any bed! The flights both had so many movies there just wasn't enough time to sleep :) needless to say, I'm a bit tired!

Extras

Some of the things that happened or we did, I didn't get a chance to talk about so this is just kind of random things....

On one of the days they took us to US land, it was a cemetery of war veterans.

And I found the Nebraska seal!

You'll see in some of the pictures that like this boy in purple, they pose with their hands for pictures and we finally found out that this is called handsome pose :)

The Boy Scouts of the Philippines!

The living conditions here were very extreme in both ways.... On one side you would see something like this, and then on just the other side of the street would be a nice mall with well equipped houses. 

If we could give a box to every "home" like this, we could have a whole new population in Heaven! 

This is me and my roommate Mikayla in our complementary robes and slippers!!

The team was absolutely incredible and I really feel like I've made some lifelong friends :)

 Not to mention our spectacular leaders

Precious!

Today at the school we were at, out of 1500 kids only 200 received boxes. It is so sad to only be able to give to part of the children when all of them could really use it. 

My new friends!! :)

All of the kids prayed before they opened their box and told God what they really wanted to be in the box an this girl said she got all she ever wanted :) it practically broke my heart!

At our second school, out of 3000 kids only 150 received boxes. It would be tough to find kids in the states with such joy and appreciation but more than that, kids who really whole heartedly want to be a child of Jesus! 

These kids are so precious and it breaks my heart to know that all of them don't get a box. Think how much we could accomplish if every single person packed only 2 boxes?!! 

Help Needed!

Today we started out at a school of 6000 children but only 200 received boxes. They told us that these children were chosen based on how much help they needed....however it was amazing to see the kids not receiving a box that were lined along the gates and were still able to hear the message! 

The kids praying over their boxes 

I had talked to this boy when we first arrived and later when he opened his box he came and found me to show me his new shirt! It fit him perfectly and you could not believe the excitement!

This is my friend named Cinderella!! :) she received a sewing kit in her box!

After an awesome distribution we went shopping!! Then our international team had share time to talk about what's going on In the Philippines, how they decide where boxes go, the process of getting boxes, and the things we can do to help. The number one thing they said was that they really needed prayers! You may not ever get the opportunity to personally deliver a box but they could not do what they are doing here unless we do what we can by packing a box and I can assure you that it is changing lives! 

The team here said that their goal is to have one million boxes in the Philippines alone in one year and I think with your help we can do it! There are SOOO many kids that still need to be reached and the shoebox is such a simple way to bring a child to Christ!

Please keep the Philippino people and children in your prayers!!

Boarding School

After an early 515am wake up call we headed on our 2hour bus ride to a boarding school. As we arrived they had a whole band playing for us!

Also all the kids made these beautiful flower necklaces and they were all lines up to put them around our neck!

There were around 40 kids at this distribution and they had an entire program prepared for us....beginning with these dancers who had prepared 6 months for our arrival

We were told that these children all came from the streets. Some were abandoned by their parents and some families just couldn't afford rent. Some of the children with families are able to live at the boarding house with food, education, and shelter and their parents work at the boarding school in return for all of those things. They have mostly preschool children but it goes up through high school and they had one college student as well. We were able to listen to some of their testimonies and the children were so focused on God! It was really incredible to see!

Then in the afternoon another school came to the same area to receive boxes. There were about 300 in this group and all if the kids that had received boxes from the morning wanted to be the ones to hand out the boxes to the new group....it was probably the most precious thing I've ever seen!

This little girl told me how excited she was to have her very own angel with her all the time :)

Then at the closing, as if they hadn't already given us enough, we all received hand colored pictures with our very own notes attached!

By far my favorite day so far!!!

Distributions

Today was distributions 1and 2! we started off at People's Missionaries Church with about 100 kids. The kids had no idea what we were doing there but we shared Gods message and brought out the boxes and the kids were so excited!

These two were going crazy once they got their boxes!!

And this girl was just overjoyed to have a new hat! She ran up to show me :)

For lunch we had fish and white rice

For our second distribution we visited a public school. There were about 300 kids and I was told that in the school they have 2 separate sessions because of how many kids there are. First is 6am-12pm and second is 12pm-6pm. And even with 2 sessions there are still 60ish kids per class room

This little boy got new shoes in his box! He told me that he couldn't afford nor had he ever had a pair of shoes

I couldn't believe how overjoyed they were! I also noticed that they were very protective of their box. Most of the kids have never received a gift like this or had anything of their own, so even for us to try and play with them or see what they got was hard because they were very skeptical and wanted to make sure nobody was going to take theirs. It was also very cool to be able to see that God truly provides exactly what each kid needed in their box. We were going crazy trying to get everything handed out....but God got every box to the right child! He really is incredible!