St Peters OCC assembly

This morning Sarah and I went over to St Peters to do an Operation Christmas Child Assembly.  It was great to see all the children again and they gave us a great welcome as we said hello.  To start off the assembly we sang God's Love is Bigger than a Burger then Sarah told the children that we had set off so early that she needed some more breakfast - a Satsuma.  She started to peel it and asked if anyone would like to share it with her.  Someone did and as Sarah tried the first piece and said how delightful it was she gave him the peel - much to his surprise!  Sarah asked if that was a nice thing to do she had done what she said she would do and gave him some.  Of course the answer was no it wasn't the best part of the Satsuma she did give the boy some to eat as she explained what it was about.  She wanted the children to realise that when we share things we should share the best parts of things and not the rubbish parts, this linked to shoe boxes in that we should put good things into them.  She continued and asked who had never ever had a birthday or Christmas present she reminded the children what it is like to get presents at special times.  I then talked about what goes into a shoe box and the first thing I showed to the children was the word love which I had taken out of a box.  I then continued to explain what to do with the shoe box, how to fill it and with what kinds of things to put into it.  I then showed pictures showing the journey of the box from local collection, to storing, processing , packing, shipping and giving out to needy children.  I also showed the countries to which we send the boxes pausing to point out a few things.  Sarah then continued by encouraging the children to fill a box and said that when we do it is us shining out God's love to others.  This led to us singing Shine after which Sarah closed the assembly with a prayer.