Local families prepare for the new school year with back-to-school sales and add more items to their lists for children in need around the world. Shoebox packers use this time to purchase gifts and essentials to fill the Christmas in Life shoeboxes. Children in over 100 countries are blessed by these gift-filled shoeboxes.
Many children around the world cannot afford school supplies and colored pencils, crayons and markers are a luxury that many cannot afford. Olesea Makarets from Moldova, who received a shoebox as a gift, divided the markers among her siblings in her house. The colored markers were used up to the last drop and then she and her siblings dipped them in water to make them last longer.
Makarets remembers what struck her most when she received a shoebox from Operation Christmas Child. “I couldn’t take my eyes off a pack of colorful markers. My siblings and I shared the markers we had, but now I had received a pack for myself.” This simple gift impacted Makarets’ life. She said, “When I received a shoebox, I realized that Jesus, the powerful man from the Bible, actually exists.”
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Last year, more than 1,200 OCC shoeboxes were shipped from Smyth County.
For more information, call 615-962-7145 or visit samaritanspurse.org/occ.
National Collection Week runs from November 18-25. Participants can donate $10 per shoebox gift online through Follow Your Box and receive a tracking label to track the destination. Those who prefer the convenience of shopping online can visit samaritanspurse.org/buildonline to select gifts tailored to the child’s age and gender, then finish packing the virtual shoebox with a photo and personalized note of encouragement.
Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse, seeks to show God’s love in a tangible way to children in need around the world and to work with the local church to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ worldwide. Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has collected and delivered over 220 million shoeboxes filled with gifts to children in over 170 countries and territories.
