Thursday, April 19, 2007

Drive Thru 4 Smiles


Hi all!!! As we are preparing to travel I also remind myself that I have committed to bringing toys for the children who are in foster care and at the baby homes. For those of you who do not know, I am running a ministry out of our home called Drive Thru 4 Smiles. I collect used/new drive thru toys from fast food chains and distribute them. You may ask why drive thru toys?? Well, these toys, as you know, are small and light weight...i.e. cheap to mail and easy to store. Currently I am working with our community outreach director from our church and have donated almost 200 toys to date. I am happy to say that I have been able to support the emergent women's shelter here in Monterey and also a food bank that supports mostly immigrant families. These toys are such a gift to these children who have very little. Many of the children have left abusive situations with their mothers and do not have a home. These toys are portable, well made and in keeping with current trends and movies-so important to all kids!!
My goal is to bring as many as I can stuff into a large suitcase and give them to our social workers to distribute when they do home visits. If you are interested please leave me a comment on this post with your email address and I will PM within a day or two. Ask your friends and family, look under the bed and in the corners of your kids rooms! I bet you'll find a ton! Also, do something healthy for yourself; the next time you go to McDonald's, order a happy meal instead of a large number whatever.

2 comments:

Hannah said...

Hey - have yo uever thought of contacting McDonald's or anyplace else directly? If you email me an offical type letter, I might have a contact to give it to at McDs. I don't know if he'll have enough pull to do anything but it's worth a shot.....you should have my address,right?

Remind me again - how long have you been waiting to hear about travel? We've had our referral since the beginning of January.

April said...

Hey Hannah! I have thought about contacting McD's and others directly. For right now, however, I need to keep this semi-small b/c I want to be able to completely focus on Grace once she comes home. I would like to do another big push for Christmas like I did last year. Will you keep me in mind for this in the coming months? I already have about 100 more toys at home and am hoping to take another 100 with us to Thailand. At some point I'd like to make this much bigger and have a website done but for now I'll keep it "home grown" just for sizes sake. I really appreciate your input and would love your help later!!
Our dossier was sent before Xmas. Grace was a waiting child and for some reason we are moving along with few hiccups (except for needing the extra dr's note two weeks ago). Apparently that pushed us back a bit b/c Holt thought we would be traveling beginning or end of June. Now they are thinking beginning of July. That's why we are anxious to hear on Wednesday as well. It owuld be great to travel with another family!!

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