Operation Christmas Child donations up
A recent report shows 11,859 shoe boxes were collected this year at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Smithfield for Operation Christmas Child’s Love in a Shoebox, an international ministry that sends gifts to children in desperate situations around the world.
The generosity of local residents led to an increase of 783 shoe boxes from last year’s collection.
“It’s wonderful,” said Mina Brown, coordinator for the Mount Moriah collection center. “It’s so amazing how they kept coming and we got so many new volunteers. They can’t wait to come back next year.”
Brown explained 4,290 shoe boxes were brought to Mount Moriah from throughout Fayette County during the national collection week in November. That’s 463 more than last year.
In addition, Mount Moriah received shoe boxes that were collected at a number of relay centers and brought to Smithfield for transportation to the national processing site in North Carolina. They included World Christian Outreach Ministries in Connellsville, Clinton Church of God in Normalville, United Community of God in Confluence, First United Methodist Church in Meyersdale and Church of the Brethren in Rockwood.
This is the 10th year that Mount Moriah has served as a collection center for the Laurel Highlands Collection Network, which handles Fayette, Somerset and Westmoreland counties. A second collection center is located at the Free Methodist Church in Greensburg, which collected about 14,000 shoe boxes. Seven relay centers took shoe boxes to Greensburg, including Fayette City Alliance Church in Fayette County.
Lucas Zellers, a media relations coordinator for Operation Christmas Child in Ohio, reported total collection for the Laurel Highlands network stands at 25,900.
“It looks like it’s an increase of about 800 boxes. They’re up about 7 percent from last year,” said Zellers of the combined collections from the Laurel Highlands network.
Operation Christmas Child is part of Samaritan’s Purse, headed by the Rev. Dr. Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, one of the country’s best-known evangelists.
The ministry asks people to donate shoe boxes filled with gifts, such as hard candy, small toys, clothing and school supplies, to children around the world who are in desperate situations, including famine, flood and war. The ministry also gives each child a Gospel in his or her own language with each shoe box, and missionaries invite the children to participate in a 10- to 12-week Bible study.
Since 1993, Samaritan’s Purse has delivered more than 124 million shoe boxes in over 150 countries. The ministry had a 2015 global goal this year to reach 11 million children.
Brown said eight members of Mount Moriah also traveled to the Baltimore processing center on Dec. 3 to help prepare shoe boxes that were shipped to Togo in West Africa.
“It’s very small compared to Charlotte,” said Brown, noting the processing center in North Carolina where church members have volunteered in years past. “But the people were very nice.”
Brown is pleased with this year’s donations.
“It’s just a blessing to be able to send a gift to a child who may never have received a gift and to share Jesus – to let them know that someone in another country loves them enough to send a gift and that Jesus loves them enough to die for them,” she said.
Brown noted she has already started purchasing materials for next year’s shoe boxes, which are always collected the third week in November. She said anyone can contribute to the program online through the year and donations are always needed for shipping costs.
More information is available at http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/.