When our host said to us at the start of the month that we might distribute Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes at a school in Northern Montenegro I was stoked. Like many North American Christian families, packing shoeboxes was a Fall tradition when was growing up. I remember my Mom buying items for the shoeboxes in July! What a wonderful and thoughtful woman who thinks about the less-fortunate all the time it seems. We could never use the red and green shoeboxes that Samaritan’s Purse provided because we could never fit all of the stuff we wanted to send to a 10-14 year old girl.
As soon as I put the shoebox that I packed in the collection centre at our church building that’s where the process ended for me. Placing it with the hundreds of other boxes, I never thought that I would be privileged to be a part of the final leg of the shoeboxes journey.
On a chilly March day (there was snow piled up to 15 feet!) I was able to observe and take part in the final process of OCC. A few teammates and I and our host drove on a windy road to a town in Northern Montenegro to distribute shoeboxes at a local school. We were up until 11pm the night before loading the bus with hundreds of boxes; allowing a nice man to have a living room again since he’d been storing them in his house since Christmas. (We handed out shoeboxes in March because our host received all of the extra boxes after the Christmas season).
We handed out shoeboxes at the school and then at a Kindergarten down the road. As classes were dismissed for the day children came up to receive their gift. Kids’ faces lit up. I was able to see a girl (about 9 years old) curiously open up her shoebox and while the rest of her classmates crowded around her to see what was inside. I think they were more excited than she was. Her peers got just as much joy out of watching her open it than she did herself. That was special.
Then we took all of the 2-4 year old shoeboxes to a local kindergarten. About 25 youngsters stayed in their desks as my team and I walked around handing them out to every single child. After a group picture I saw a little guy with a shoebox all alone in the classroom as all his classmates had already moved on. He was overwhelmed and had no idea what to do. My paternal instinct told me to approach him and make him smile. He cried instead. Oops.
And that was it. Once we handed them all out we drove home. So far, it is the most memorable days I’ve had on the World Race. It was special to see the final handlers of the OCC shoeboxes and be a small part of the end process that was started by millions of other people 15 000 kilometres away.
The families packing shoeboxes in November, the volunteers in the sorting warehouses in America/Canada, the cargo handlers loading them on planes, the people handing them out to children overseas all work together for the same goal to bring Jesus’ love and joy to an underprivileged child. The best part was witnessing the joy of Christ plastered all over their faces (and mine of course).
