Good News! Great Joy!

This morning, we wrapped-up Operation Christmas Child's National Collection Week for 2017 and it's been awesome! For the past 8 days, volunteers across the US have been accepting, praying over and packing shoeboxes into shipping cartons. Today each of those cartons will be packed into tractor trailers so that they can begin their exciting journeys!  Click here to read a little more background that I shared two years ago. You can also click here to see last year's post for additional insight. 

Tomorrow the semis, stuffed with Operation Christmas Child boxes from 5,000 collection centers, will fill our nation's highways. To provide prospective, there will be more Samaritan's Purse trucks on the roads than those trucking Walmart cargo! Each of the tractor trailers will offload at one of the processing centers (there are eight across the USA). From there, they go by plane, ship, truck...even on the backs of animals into the hands of children in more than 100 countries.  

This banner has been on display in our church and is a photo of an actual recipient. How precious!

People, young and old,  from our community have been dropping-off their shoeboxes since last Monday. Individuals, groups, offices and schools have contributed boxes and those, along with those from our own church, totaled over 4,400. Our team packed them all into cartons the past week.  In 2016, over 11 million boxes were distributed worldwide. Along with the toys, personal hygiene items and school supplies that we stuff into each box, the receiving child gets a copy of The Greatest Gift  (a colorful representation of the Gospel) in his/her own language. From there, the child is given the opportunity to enroll in a course called The Greatest Journey where they are taught by trained teachers to grow in their own faith.


National Collection Week is intensive and involves hours of work from many volunteers... and it's worth every second! I am already really looking forward to serving again next year.