Operation Christmas Child packs 17,244 shoeboxes for needy children

Operation Christmas Child, a project of international relief organization Samaritan's Purse, provides shoeboxes stuffed with various gifts to children in need around the world. This year, despite the COVID-19 pandemic presenting many difficulties, Operation Christmas Child's Southeast Missouri chapter collected 17,244 shoeboxes.

Barb Wilfong, Southeast Missouri Area Coordinator for Operation Christmas Child, was very excited with how many shoe boxes were packed this year.

"We're just so thrilled with the number. We work all year, and we have some dedicated people on our team," Wilfong said. "We just try to get new ideas and inspire people to pack shoe boxes. We just found out the numbers, especially during this crazy year where a lot of people don't have jobs, and just some difficulty with shopping and things. It's just been such a blessing that people are still so excited about it and want to share.

"We're just thrilled with it, and can't say enough about all the people who just worked really hard this year to get 17,000 boxes."

According to a press release, Operation Christmas Child collected millions of shoeboxes at more than 4,000 curbside drop-off locations around the United States this year despite an ongoing global pandemic.

Boxes were stuffed and delivered to the Southeast Missouri chapter's central drop-off location in Farmington, where they were sent to the Operation Christmas Child Processing Center in Boone, North Carolina, where they were processed.

"They're inspected and if there's anything that isn't allowed to go into the country they'll remove that," Wilfong said. "They have filler items, which is like extra toys or whatever, that people have leftover and they send those also. They're put in the boxes when something is removed so it'll be nice, and for the children I have a lot of different things to choose from. Then they're sent by boat and by plane to different countries. I think there were over 100 countries this year. I just got an email saying that my boxes I sent had gone to do 12 different countries so far."

Wilfong mentioned three specific stories she was inspired by in the Cape Girardeau area. One of which is the small congregation of Caney Fork Baptist Church in Oak Ridge, who packed 702 shoeboxes to be shipped.

"We just thought that during this crazy year that is just remarkable that they could do such a great thing." Wilfong said. "We're just so thrilled with that."

A resident of Saxony Village Retirement Community in Cape Girardeau, Ken Morgan, wraps shoeboxes each year for Operation Christmas Child. When he doesn't have an empty shoebox to use, Wilfong said, he makes his own.

"He just collects shoeboxes and wraps them for people to use to pack shoeboxes, and if he doesn't have a shoebox he just creates his own from recycled cardboard," Wilfong said. "We just thought that was just a remarkable story, and he shares the boxes with different churches."

St. Paul Lutheran Church in Jackson has a group, Helping Hand Ladies, some of whom are in their 80s, according to Wilfong. The Helping Hand Ladies set a goal this year to pack 500 shoeboxes. According to Wilfong, they nearly doubled that goal.

"They packed 976 shoe boxes," Wilfong said. "During the time where we had the quarantine, where nobody could get out, they just started making things at home and it was really good therapy for them."

Operation Christmas Child's mission, according to its website, is to "provide local partners around the world with shoeboxes filled with small toys, hygiene items and school supplies as a means of reaching out to children in their own communities with the Good News of Jesus Christ." The shoeboxes are then shipped outside the United States to children affected by war, poverty, natural disasters, famine and disease, and children on Native American reservations in the U.S. also receive boxes.

There's still time to pack a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child, if you would like to do so visit www.samaritanspurse.org/operation-christmas-child/buildonline/.