advent calendar

Yikes! I know it has been a while - there are lots of pictures to post, stories to tell... but that will have to wait until after finals! I couldn't pass up the opportunity to break from my massive paper writing and post some PDFs for you that I made for H this year. It started in October when we did our annual shoebox trip to fill up a box for Operation Christmas Child. This year H got very excited about it! He wanted to pick out every item and for weeks afterward would continually ask about the 'little boy'. He wanted to know if he was awake or asleep, did he get his toys yet, does he go to school, how is his mommy, etc. We began praying for this box and our 'little boy' at night as well as praying for some friends of ours who are in the process of an international adoption and were just placed. I was really surprised how much he seemed to understand about these children on the other side of the world and what a joy it is to pray for them. That gave me an idea! I recently bought a sweet advent calendar on etsy and wanted to add something else to it to make it a little more 'reason for the season.' So, I went to the Operation Christmas Child website and looked up where they distributed the most boxes and then started searching for pictures and maps and prayer requests. I assembled this all into documents for one side to be the pictures and name of the country and the other side to be the prayer requests. I'm going to put these slips in his advent calendar everyday and we will take one out talk about the country, pray for the country, and then use little mini clothespins to pin them on our tree. I might buy him his own little tree for his room, we'll see. I'm excited to start the tradition though of celebrating Christmas through praying for the children of the world. Hope you can use this with your families this Christmas season!