Involving Kids in Mission

In the days and weeks leading up to our first trip to Korea — and to becoming parents — we wrote about the kind of culture we wanted to create in our home and family life. Part of that included Shaping a Servant Culture.

To help our children become servants and givers, we want to let them share in opportunities of blessing others. And one of the ways we like to do that is Operation Christmas Child, an annual outreach of Samaritan’s Purse. Last year was <a href=”https://www.williswired.com/2008/10/29/operation-christmas-child-with-ethan/””> Ethan’s first year to participate in Operation Christmas Child. This year, Sarah got to watch. Next year, she’ll be ready to jump in, as well.

A nice new development this year is the ability to track where your shoe boxes go. By making an online donation (to cover the $7/box shipping cost) through EZ Give, you get a label with a bar code, which is used to track the destination of your shoe boxes. The traditional method is to include your donation with your shoe box.

Well, we would be interested in hearing how you have involved — or are involving — your children in mission and/or giving in the comments below.

3 thoughts on “Involving Kids in Mission”

  1. Great Job Guys! The UMYF did 12 boxes this year and we too are going to track them through the on-line bar coding. It will be really interesting to see where they go and to see if any of the kids write back. Next weekend is the UMYF trip to St. Marys to pack the bags for the soldiers away from home this Holiday….Another great Mission Project. Maybe as your two little ones get older you can join us in this very touching experience too!

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  2. I truly commend you for starting mission education with Ethan. The sooner we all learn to share our blessings, the closer to God’s Kingdom we will be!
    Each year we give our god-daughter a personal gift for her birthday, but at Christmas we do an alternative gift.This year we are donanting to the Central Asia Institute (www.ikat.org) in her honor. This organization’s goal is to promote and support community-based education, especailly for girls, in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We got the idea after reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. They also have a mission education suggestion at http://www.penniesforpeace.org.
    Also this year we are going to give our one year old grand-daughter a toy bunny representing the gift of a trio of rabbits we are making in her honor to Heifer International (www.heifer.org)- one of our favorite ways to give a gift that keeps on giving. Another suggestion we have used with our god-daughter is Kits at Christmas from Mission Central. We have given school kits in her honor to allow her to give to others what she has and often takes for granted. More information on Kits at Christmas can be gotten at http://www.missioncentral.org. Mission Education cannot start too soon!

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    • Great ideas!

      We’ll file those away. One of the other main things we want to do this year is a gift to Heifer, as well. We’ve done that for several years, but this year, we’ll try to involve Ethan (and Sarah in future years). We’ll see how that goes!

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