Today was Shoebox day!
Samaritan’s Purse have been running Operation Christmas Child since 1990, blessing underprivileged children around the world with gift-filled shoeboxes wrapped and packed by children and adults in the UK. It’s a campaign that thousands of schools, churches and other organisations from across the UK get involved with between September and November each year. In fact, it is now the UK’s largest children’s Christmas appeal. The idea is simple. Children and adults wrap and pack shoeboxes with a range of gifts. After processing for export purposes, OCC send them overseas where local churches distribute them to children, on the basis of need alone. Each shoebox is an unconditional gift, given to a child with nothing asked for, or expected in return; no pledges, no obligation to go to church or attend classes; “no strings attached”. These shoebox gifts are an expression of God’s love to us, and the gift of His Son Jesus at Christmas. They give local churches the opportunity to show God’s love to children in a tangible way and, during the distribution event, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, perhaps through age-appropriate music, dance and puppet shows, or through a little book of Bible stories The Greatest Gift, distributed with the shoebox, not inside it.
And if you’ve seen any of OCC’s videos, who could not want to take part and bring a child the joy we saw today in this video on Romania!
We received and blessed about 50 shoeboxes, which will be processed at OCC’s Guildford warehouse.
Thank you to everybody who made up a box, or contributed items, donated, or prayed. That’s not it for this year though; you can still let us have your shoebox up to the end of November, and you can volunteer to help the logistics operation by contacting OCC here.