Operation “You are Loved” in IDAHO…
I’m so excited to report that Operation “You are Loved” was a complete success!!! 
I have been humbled by the tender mercies we have received over and over again, as we’ve been able to take part in Real Imprints. It’s truly been amazing, and I can’t deny God’s hand in all of it. I wish so bad that I had time to tell you EVERYTHING…hopefully someday I can! But we’ll start with Operation “You are Loved” first! We were blessed to get a lot of stuffed animals donated…but there was a kicker…the Women’s and Children’s Alliance could only accept NEW from us as a gift because of health code. We were a little worried and the thought even crossed my mind, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we got just the right amount.” Guess what??? That is exactly what happened! We needed 36 new and exactly 36 new were donated!!! So cool! We were able to donate the used stuffed animals to the WACA thrift store so that was great too! The women and children are able to shop there for free, so we were excited about that!
We put a cute little card, expressing our love and admiration for them, on each animal from Real Imprints (that includes all you Imprinters)!
The girl’s school was AMAZING and so supportive! They jumped on board and were so excited to be apart of it! This is the girls taking their donation box in.
The girls helped us tie the cards on each stuffed animal and then we headed out to do the big delivery…
We had some miscommunications so our first attempt was a failure…which was a total bummer because we were all so excited!
…the sleeping one really is excited, you just can’t tell:-)
After much anticipation, we were finally on our way to a successful drop off…and look, everyone was awake!
As we left, one of the Moms and her children were leaving from a counseling appointment. It broke my heart. I wanted to kidnap them and take them with me so they could have relief from their pain, and not have to go back. I wanted to hug and kiss the kids and make them feel special!
It blew my mind that 1 out of 4 women are in an abusive relationship. I didn’t realize it was that many. I hope that our little operation helped them forget about their problems for just a minute, and feel loved! Some of them are in such bad circumstances that the actual location of the house they stay in is not disclosed. We had to drop the stuffed animals off at the building where they do some counseling and then they were taken to them to the secret location. So as hard as it was to think about the situations they were in, it felt great to be part of such a great operation, and it was great to see my kids part of it!
I learned that it is important to raise awareness of abuse. It doesn’t have to be physical abuse. It can be emotional or mental as well. They said that control is often the root of it. There are many options for help, and the Women’s Alliance is just one of those options. Please join me and pray for those who are victims of abuse.
Operation “You are Loved” in NORTH CAROLINA…
Operation “You are Loved” spread all the way to North Carolina! I like to think of imprints going all the way from Idaho to North Carolina!:-) The report is that it went well and as you can see, they had a lot of fun leaving their imprint!:-)
THANK YOU to all the Imprinters who donated, delivered, or helped in any way! We couldn’t do it without you!!!
-Lindsey
This story appeared first on Real Imprints.