Operation Thanksgiving

On Sunday at church it was announced that we would be doing Operation Thanksgiving. What is that, well the church is providing the turkeys and is asking the congregation to supply the additional items for a traditional Thanksgiving meal (mashed potatoes, stuffing, broth, green beans, cranberry sauce, pumpkin & rolls). We are doing this to provide meals for families in our community that may not be able to get quite everything they need for their Thanksgiving dinenr. Everyone was asked to take a grocery bag or two and fill them with the items by today and bring back to the church. So my husband being the generous person he is went up there and came back with a handful of sacks, (how many you ask?), fifteen to be exact. So I am thinking to myself as was Doug, this is a great project for our family, not only will be helping these families we are teaching our boys the joy you feel when you help those in need. I had my list in hand and on Monday afternoon the boys and I loaded up and went to Wal-mart to get everything we needed. Eli enjoyed counting everything out and putting them into the basket. The thing that bothered me was people kept staring at us like we were crazy and I am thinking to myself well how hard is it to by a few extra things (ranging $7-$9 a bag, without a turkey) to help a family that may not be able to have a Thanksgiving meal. Sometimes people really amaze you, one old lady asked what I was doing and she said that is so generous of you and your boys are learning a valuable lesson. By the time we got to the checkout line our basket was nearly overflowing, luckily I didn't have to use very many of those plastic bags (hate those, I use the Eco bags), I mainly grabbed the boxes that held the canned items which made them easier to transport. For the boys being such wonderful helpers we stopped off at McDonald's on the way out. After Eli got home from school yesterday morning we started our process of loading all of the bags with each item. The boys really enjoyed doing this (I will upload a slide show as soon as photo bucket starts working), after we were done we headed up to the church to take everything into the church kitchen. I believe we were told with all the bags gone after the service on Sunday our church was going to be able to help out 130 families in the community. This is wonderful and we love that the boys are learning at such an early age you need to help other people, especially when we tell them over and over to love thy neighbor.