Nov 24, 2017 By Dave Zuchowski, For The Greene County Messenger 3 min read

Since July, the Greater Purpose Team Ministry, a charge (network) of six United Methodist Churches in the area, has been filling shoe boxes with items and gifts that will be sent to children in more than 100 countries around the world.

As participants in the nationwide program known as Operation Christmas Child, the Ministry has joined other Greene County churches, organizations and individuals helping make Christmas a brighter day for needy children overseas.

At the end of each month, starting in July, Susan Christopher, missions committee chair from Waynesburg, made the rounds of the member churches in Denbo, Fredericktown, Howe, Jefferson, Rices Landing and Roscoe collecting the boxes.

Parishioners filled the containers with donated items like school supplies, toys, non-liquid hygiene items such as tooth brushes, bar soaps, wash cloths and combs, accessories such as T-shirts, socks, hats, sunglasses, hair clips, watches and jewelry as well as crafts such as hair bows, finger puppets and friendship bracelets.

“Each month, we filled the boxes with something different,” Christopher said. “In July, for instance, the donated items were for boys between the ages of 2 and 14. In August, they were back-to-school items needed to fill 100 pencil boxes. September was for items for girls aged 2 to 14.”

You might think that Christopher put in a lot of driving time between the churches … and you would be right. Her effort is really a year-round responsibility because she also collects items for another program called UMCOR, short for United Methodist Committee on Relief. The latter helps people both domestically and abroad who have suffered the ravages of natural disasters such as hurricanes. Items sent to help them include cleaning buckets, health and bedding kits, layettes and sewing and school kits.

Collections for UMCOR begin in January and end in June. Collections for Operation Christmas Child begin in July and extend through November.

Beside its work with UMCOR, Christopher’s church in Jefferson has participated in Operation Christmas Child for the past six or seven years and seen an increase in the number of donated boxes each year. This year, the Jefferson Church is serving as the relay point for storing the shoe boxes for the six-church Ministry.

“I try to set a goal of adding about nine boxes each year to our total,” Christopher said. “I feel it’s a very worthwhile project.”

In mid-November, church volunteers got the boxes ready and removed any remaining price tags on the items. On Nov. 17, Pastor Rick Bowser and a church volunteer transported the boxes to the Church of the Nazarene in Waynesburg, where all of the Greene County participants took their boxes.

As the boxes arrived at the church, volunteers packed them into larger cartons. On Sunday, Nov. 19, Rev. John Poling of the First Church of the Nazarene blessed them. Volunteers then hauled them with a pick up truck and trailer donated by Four-Star Pipe and Supply of Eighty-Four, Pa. to the Bible Chapel near McMurray.

Other relay stations in the region also took their cartons to the Bible Chapel for delivery to Boone, North Carolina. From Boone, the cartons will be shipped overseas to children around the world.

Over the years, the program has increased dramatically in Greene County. When Oakview Methodist Church in Waynesburg took over the collection duties in 2007, for instance, they received a total of 775 boxes. Last year, the project collected 1,479 boxes county-wide. This year, Julie Gatrell, relay coordinator for the Greene County operation, said the project collected 1,636 boxes.

This means that, somewhere in the world, 1,636 children will have a more joyous Christmas, thanks to the generosity of the people of Greene County.