Operation Christmas Child - A WONDERUL outreach to the children!

Operation Christmas Child ~ It's that time of the year again....to fill a box for a boy or girl and this box will be sent to foreign countries where children hardly have such a thing...receiving a Christmas gift!  So people all over the US began in November to do these boxes: filling a box for a  Boy or Girl and you decide what age you would like to work with!

 

 Then you go to the store and do a little shopping to fill the box...fun things that a child that age bracket would enjoy!  Flashlight, hair pens, ball, doll, truck, yo-yo etc!

Then you bring it back to the collecting area and in this
case it was the church we attend!

We packed in the 2 cars...

 
 We then drove the boxes to another town where MORE boxes would be delivered at, and then they would be loaded into a truck to be taken to the Portland Airport and flown to the east coast North Carolina! 
There Operation Christmas Child Boxes would be put into containers and flown to the different countries!

Oh the JOY of receiving a gift BOX!!!! 

 Some of the children have never received Christmas presents before!

 Our little town of Port Orford did 172 boxes this year!  Yeah Port Orford....that's Great! 

 What a blessing to be involved with this!  It's the 'best' to get involved doing something and knowing it brings such happiness during the  Christmas season! 

A Visit to McMinnville & Vancouver Washington

 

It was a 5 day enjoyable trip to visit family and friends!

Uncle (Oom) Paul & Janet live in McMinnville about 5 1/2 hours from our house here on the coast - North!  We planned to enjoy a couple of days together including going to IKEA the big store by the Portland Airport, then go to the Dutch Store in Beaverton (yum!) and then on the Manila Market to buy Indonesian ingredients, and lastly Trader Joe's...and we did it ALL!  Zipping here and there from one store to the other...and Boy did we have fun! 

 They blessed us with a beautiful coastal scene picture which we had a "perfect" place for by the front door!

Thank you Oompie & Janet!  So sweet!  And also they gave us their rice cooker which was another appliance we would need to get!  (we sold a lot when we left for our trip a few years back!)

 After our sweet visit - we headed to Aunt (Tante) Terry in Newburg and enjoyed a nice lunch with her at the Senior Retirement home - we love her very cute apartment she has!

That same afternoon we also headed north across the Columbia River into Washington, where our very good friends,  moved to into their new home!  Reinier & Jacqueline are friends whom we got to know through the "famous" & well-known Dutch Shuffleboard game {sjoelbak} and they import them into the US from the company that makes them in Holland "Heemskerk" 

Just love this family!  Rein & Jacqueline have 3 sons Daniel, Stephen is married to Abby and there is a 1st new grandbaby "Josephine" and then Joshua - a sweet family and Nick & I are always so' happy to spend time with them!  Reinier is an Indo - just like Nick and Jacqueline is born in Holland just like me!  

 Reiner made the delicious Indonesian drink we all love called "Cendol" ....and little Josephine really liked that too! 
Cendol - YUM!  

Nick & I enjoyed that drink in Indonesia and of course our parents made it too when the Indo events were held in our homes!

 "Opa" LAUGHED as he watched his little Josephine drink that!  Yep...that Indo blood continues into the next generation! 

 Cute huh...she turned 1 year on my son's Birthday ....Oct 4th!

 So the story of our weekend continues....we also met & made new friends by way of a little "Indo" booklet that comes out once a month!  Nelly (Indo) and her husband Lee who live in Texas were people who supported a family in need in Indonesia when we were there.  And when we returned to the US - Nelly made contact with us and we skyped some weeks ago!

Then she let us know that her son lives in Vancouver WA and that they would be visiting their family.... and could be "connect" in Vancouver?  Could we drive up to meet them? Well we certainly wanted to! 

They  purchased a sjoelbak for their family!

So that is how it came about...meeting Nelly & Lee and getting together with Reinier Jacqueline too...a real "Indo" meeting in Vancouver-        Gezellig!
                    ......off Course!

 We all met at a delicious Thai Restaurant!  It was so much fun...Lee & Nelly were adorable and Reinier & Jacqueline and family all joined in with good food and good talking!  We sure hope to do that again in the future!

Daniel cooked up a delicious pumpkin spice pancake 

breakfast!

Jacqueline had a book for us to read...called "The Century of my Father" a book written about the days gone by of the old Dutch colony of Indonesia!  A Must Read we are told!


Another book seems so cute:  an American gal living in Holland wrote this book....
~ all the "strange" or peculiar things the Dutch do from a foreigner's point of view!  Now that I want to read!


Stuff Dutch People  

We were also in the metropolitan Vancouver/Portland area to look for a car!  Yes here on the southern coast of Oregon - it's a bit hard to find!  So we looked on Craigslist and yes we did find the exact car we had hoped for: a Toyota Highlander - 4 cylinder car!

...and this is really funny...but also a blessing....about a month ago...we received a call from someone in Washington State inquiring about our tow car - the PT Cruiser.  Nick & I had hoped to sell both the motor home and tow car together because it sure was wonderful & needed to have both.  But this particular person "Dan" already had a motor home and only needed the tow car.  He called several times - checking to see if we had found a "replacement car" yet?  No not yet...but we are going to visit family and friends in the Vancouver area and "if'"  we do find a car up there we can certainly take his number along and call him?  Yes he said please do!  Well that Saturday he called us again  and Lo and Behold - we did find "the" car we had hoped for!   It was actually the very brand car we had sold  when we left for our trip - a Highlander!
Anyway we purchased the Toyota and called Dan the interested party in the PT Cruiser and in one morning we bought the Toyota and then emptied out the PT Cruiser on a shopping center parking lot and then met Dan & his wife at a Starbucks and they bought the Cruiser....Wow...talk about a smooth deal huh?????  We headed home back to the coast (7hrs) that very afternoon with a "another" car!  Nice! 

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 We made a new friend here in Port Orford!  Mark from Kansas...and we invited him over for dinner & a game - a Dutch game...shuffleboard!  Mark "blew us away" with a really high score....my he was good!  Very good aim - that guy! ha! 

Nick & I are a bit rusty from our travels...yeah..yeah..."excuses! excuses!"

 We love to introduce the game to friends - always a JOY! 

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 Tineke my girlfriend in Holland (I have known her since 69' - her son Bob & girlfriend Dunja are in Nepal and will be climbing Mt Everest the next 25 days!  My what an endeavor!  And Bob sends me the itinerary and he said "Ellen there is a Paul Diemel" on our list of climbers!  My who could that Diemel be?????  We hope to hear more soon! 

 Bob & Dunja did a 2000 kilometer bike track in Australia this summer as well!  Boy so adventurous!  But Tineke brought her two children to visit me in the US when they were young- and so I think they got the "bug" with all that traveling!  We had a motor home then and 3 women (my sis included), 4 kids all traveled down the coast to Disneyland!  What fun!