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Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Sweets ~ Giving and Getting: Turning Gum Into Candy

One of the "green" center pieces.
There were four different colors of vases.
My daughters planned an end of the year AWANA award banquet at our church for the kids and their parents for this past Wednesday evening.  They used the four AWANA colors (red, blue, yellow, green) as the theme and included hard candy as part of the center pieces.  I had over 100 free packs of gum in my Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Stockpile I had collected already this year thru my coupon shopping and there were brands in the color theme so I shared 10 of each color to add one to each of their centerpieces (we planned for 40 tables with 7 seats each).

The gum and candy were big hits, yet after cleaning up from the banquet we had lots of the hard candy and some Twizzlers and suckers left over.  These were given to me to save for my Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes this fall.  I'll separate it all by type for storage so the flavors will not mix and then mix it again, double bag it and include a bag in each of the shoe boxes I send (well, in how ever many that I have bags for, I may need to buy some more).

It was fun to have a stockpile of shoe box goodies to give to fill a present need and also to see forty packs of gum turn into hundreds of pieces of candy--just what I needed in my stockpile.  It is true that what is needed for the shoe boxes is always provided--and sometimes in unexpected ways.

Such a nice bright addition for a child's shoe box.

UPDATE 2017: Candy is no longer allowed in Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.

Each Saturday Sarah shares our additions to our stockpile.  You can see them all here:  Shoebox Stockpile Saturday ~ Adding to Our Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Stockpile.

5 comments:

  1. DebJune 1, 2012 at 11:02 AM

    Thanks for the post. AWANA and Samaritans Purse are my passion. God has provided for these loves and your site has helped me find very good deals for both.

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  2. Cheryl @ Simply ShoeboxesJune 1, 2012 at 11:36 AM

    Deb, you fit right in our family then! They are ours, too. So glad to have helped you in your work with both, too, shedding light on another way God provides.

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  3. SusanJune 2, 2012 at 12:30 PM

    Glad to see you had a chance to post Cheryl. Hope all is well with you and your family.
    Great job by your daughters!
    I was happy to see a post on candy. I teach High School and got some dum-dum pops and tootsie rolls (the latter on clearance at CVS) to help us be motivated for exam review. Of course I want the the leftovers to go to OCC. Do you know if the tootsie rolls can go? Seems they should survive if gummie candy does, but I was not sure.
    Thanks in advance.

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  4. Cheryl @ Simply ShoeboxesJune 2, 2012 at 1:25 PM

    Hi, Susan! I was happy to have a little more computer time and be able to share. It is a nice break for me and fun to chat with others who love to give, also. YES, Tootsie Rolls can go in the OCC boxes. Neat idea on candy motivation, and as you can see, I just love left overs :-).

    My youngest daughter and I were organizing my inventory and finding some things to share for an upcoming Guatemala mission trip from our church this morning. I love having the stock to be able to share when needs come up and then fill the shoe boxes in the Fall. Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting.

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  5. SusanJune 11, 2012 at 6:40 PM

    Thanks for your response and I hope the mission trip is successful as to His purpose!

    ReplyDelete

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