If you’ve ever been in an American church during the Christmas season, you’ve probably encountered Samaritan’s Purse’s Operation Christmas Child.
But just in case you haven’t… Samaritan’s Purse is one of the largest humanitarian relief organizations in our nation. In my mind, they are most well-known for the program they run at Christmas time – Operation Christmas Child. Essentially, this program asks the Body of Christ, via churches, Bible studies, and Christian organizations, to assemble shoeboxes full of toys, basic necessities, and school supplies that Samaritan’s Purse sends to children in impoverished communities all over the world.
I’ve assembled at least a minimum of seven shoeboxes throughout my 22 years of life. I even had the pleasure of collecting all of the shoeboxes that my sorority put together last year and delivering them to the collection center, where I saw thousands of boxes gathered from my university’s county alone.
So when the pastor we’ve been working with in Ukraine brought out a bunch of wrapped shoeboxes with a Samaritan’s Purse labels wrapped around them and the familiar sticker that designates the gender and age the box was made for – my eyes lit up.
Samaritan’s Purse is a trusted organization, so I guess I never doubted that the boxes made it to their appointed destinations. But there was suddenly something so comforting and exciting about knowing there were shoeboxes in this tiny village outside of Odessa, Ukraine.
My feelings then shifted from comfort and excitement to a genuine appreciation for how the pastor had found a way to present the gifts to the children and use it as an evangelism tool. After all, it isn’t Christmas time here. It takes a while to ship things overseas, so while I never thought about it, it wasn’t surprising that the packages hadn’t arrived until mid-April.
The pastor actually had brought the idea of the gifts up the previous Sunday, telling the congregation, which is almost entirely made up of children, about how the salvation we receive through Jesus is not only a gift for us but for others too. He told the kids that if they brought someone with them the following Sunday, he would give both them and their friends a real gift as a reminder of the gift of salvation and how they need to share that gift with their friends. So when the children showed up on Sunday morning, they brought several new faces with them to hear the message of Jesus and receive these tangible representations of what Jesus did for us.
After church, we helped the children open their new gifts. We watched the faces of these children, who are some of the poorest in their village, light up even more than my own eyes had when I saw the boxes. They immediately broke into the toys and started playing and eatting their candy. They got excited about the letters from the people who sent the boxes. (We're going to help one of the older girls write back to her people in English!)
It was joy. Plain and simple. They had joy. I had joy watching them.
There’s no crazy revelation that I drew from witnessing all this. Sorry to disappoint.
All I can say is that being on the receiving end made me want to be on the giving end all the more again in the future. I will keep making shoeboxes so long as I have the means, and I encourage you to make them too.
And if you’re one of the cynics, who looks at programs like Operation Christmas Child and thinks that one less box doesn’t make a difference, I promise you it does. I’ve seen it first hand.
Generosity always makes a difference. It’s the currency of God’s Kingdom.
P.S. If you’re feeling moved to be generous right now – my team mates Katie Noble and Sara Hernandez are still in need of funds to be on the World Race. Please visit their blogs to support them! (You can find the links on the left hand side of my blog.)
