Inspired by Beth Cupitt's post about blessing bags back in October and the wonderful work of Ordinary Hero, our Daisy Scout troop spent this Wednesday's meeting preparing blessing bags of their own to send with Ordinary Hero on their next mission trip to Ethiopia.
During our meeting last week, we spent a few minutes talking about the project and sharing ideas about clothing, toys, and books that the girls thought would be most useful and loved by little girls and boys in Ethiopia. Then, they headed home and looked through their closets and toy chests, and in the process they found little treasures to share. With their moms, they picked out clothing that they wanted to share with children in Ethiopia. Madeleine and I, like many other mother-daughter Daisy duos, headed to the shops over the weekend, picking out new underwear and socks to tuck into the bags. We picked up gallon sized bags, stickers, and a stack of unlined note cards, too.
When we arrived at Daisy Scouts Wednesday, we started setting up the stations:
1. Clothing - For the outfits (pants/leggings/skirt and shirts or dress), underwear, and socks - stacked in neat piles by the myriad of moms who stepped up to get things organized while I led the first part of the meeting with the girls.
2. Toys - Little, lightweight toys, books, dolls, stickers, stuffed animals... So many sweet little items, picked with love by little girls who wanted to share their blessings.
3. Notes of encouragement - For making little notes for the child who will receive each bag. I loved watching little hands hard at work, jotting down sweet messages - inventive spelling and all, signed with love from Oregon.
This amazing group of moms helped make sure the bags were packed up with matching
sizes and labeled on the outside with the gender/age of child the bag is
intended
for.
Before the girls started filling their bags, we sat down together and watched this amazing video sharing Ordinary Hero's work in 2011 in Ethiopia. The girls watched so intently, inspired by their act of kindness in putting together these special blessing bags for these beautiful children and others just like them.
In the end, we filled several bags with neatly packed and labeled gallon-sized bags, filling the trunk of my car. This afternoon, I headed over to UPS after work where the kind woman behind the desk helped me to find and pack everything up before shipping it to Ordinary Hero.
