Operation Christmas Child Packing Party Invitations
Have you heard of Operation Christmas Child? It’s a ministry through Samaritan’s Purse that allows us to send a shoebox of gifts/personal items to a child in a third world country for Christmas–which is often the only gift they receive. We participated in this outreach last year for the very first time and it is something that we all deeply enjoyed doing together. This year, we decided that we want to host our own packing party and share these printable (and customizable) Operation Christmas Child Packing Party invitations!
I thought I would share our step-by-step process for planning and carrying out this party over the next several weeks in case you are interested in hosting your own party (and allowing even more children to receive a special gift this Christmas).
If you decide you want to host your own packing party, here are a few suggestions for planning:
1. Decide on a date/time as well as how many people you want to invite.
2. Order some promotional materials from Samaritan’s Purse, especially if the families you are inviting are not familiar with OCC. These materials are free. Please only order as many materials as you will absolutely need. We ordered the Pack-a-Box Guides to include in our mailed invitations, a DVD to show to our church, stickers for the kids at the party, and 1 window decal for our front door on the day of the party.
3. Decide whether you will be taking all the boxes to the drop-off location in your area (which I recommend), or whether you’ll ask each individual family to take their own box.
4. Will you provide boxes or will each family provide their own box? You can order boxes from Samaritan’s Purse (in sets of 100), or you can purchase plastic shoeboxes in bulk (which is what we did). I paid $35 for 36 6-quart plastic shoe boxes from Walmart.com about a month ago. Unfortunately, Walmart is showing this pack is unavailable at this time! The other option is having each family be responsible for their own box.
Here’s how to download and customize your printable invitation: Â
:: Â First, you’ll need to download this free font.
::  Next, Open the Operation Christmas Child Packing Party Invitation. Type your information into the form boxes and save. If you want to send these to a photo center to be printed (like I did), you’ll want to make sure to save it as a JPEG (not a PDF, as it is already formatted). If you will be printing the invitations yourself, you can leave the file the same.
:: Â Print your invitations. The final print size will be 4×6. Mail your invitations at least 2-3 weeks ahead of time!
*These customizable/printable invitations were graciously created by Rachel at RV Parties (thanks Rachel)!
Stay tuned for more details!
Our church participates in this program. I love that you are doing this and having a party. What a wonderful idea.
We have done this in the past with a playgroup and our homeschool support group. It was a very practical way to get our kids thinking about others. We all loved it.
I participated in this as a child, but now as an adult my church does not do this anymore. I would love to start this up again! I do have a one question…do you include clothing in the boxes? Thanks for sharing this. This has been in my heart for a while to do and you gave me the push that I needed to jump on it!
Oh! Oh! Oh! I am so excited about this! I’ve been wanted to host a party like this for a couple years now and have never really been quite sure where to start!! Looking forward to the Rest of these posts!!
I was just looking at Walmarts website and found these:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-6pc-Shoebox-Clear-Set-of-2/15701759#
Not quite as inexpensive but a great option!
I did my invite a bit different but I love this one too. I used the brochure “how to pack a shoe box” and did a little refolding so I had a blank side to address and then created an invite and put inside with saying below address….You’re invited! That way all the info for what and how to pack is all right there. We had our kick off in church today and I used the brochure insert and made labels for each about the party and inserted it in our church bulletin. My first time so I hope it goes well, look forward to it. Not only is our whole church invited but my friends and hopefully they will bring theirs too! Nov 1.
Up in our northern WI area, it was recommended not to use the plastic boxes due to cracking if they should sit in the delivery trucks in severe cold for any length of time and then they’d have to be repacked, good to know!
Is there any chance Rachel at RV Parties would be willing to make one small update to the invitations for this year as the shipping is now $9? Thanks for the GREAT invitations. They’re wonderful!