28 Nov And Yet More Shoeboxes!

Every year, dozens of UB churches participate in Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse. Several thousand shoeboxes are sent by UB churches to children around the world. We invited churches to tell us how many shoeboxes they collected. We have posted results here, here, and here. We still invite you to tell us how many boxes your church filled.

Daytona UB Church (Holly Hill, Fla.)
Number of Shoeboxes: 1376

Pastor Chuck McKeown (right) writes, “We collected boxes from several other churches as well as our own. The total was about 100 more than last year.” Several youth helped package the boxes for shipment.

Kunkle UB Church (Kunkle, Ohio)
Number of shoeboxes: 18

Stryker UB Church (Stryker, Ohio)
Number of Shoeboxes: 60

Pastor Nick Woodwall (right) says, “The Stryker church has collected shoeboxes for several years. The people were particularily enthused about it after viewing the DVD about Operation Christmas Child.”

Bethel UB Church (Elmore, Ohio)
Number of Shoeboxes: 86

Fran Overmyer of Bethel writes, “The younger children went shopping for things to put in the boxes. In past years we had someone who packed shoeboxes all year round. However, she is not able to do that anymore due to health reasons. The other boxes filled were brought in individually and also one person had a shoebox-filling with her granddaughters, daughter, and a couple of friends. They did 70+ boxes. We have participated in this for about 15 years.”

Avlon UB Church (Bremen, Ohio)
Number of Shoeboxes: 50

Pastor Chuck Wheatley (right) reports, “We have enjoyed participating in this program since it first began. One lady picked up 6 boxes at her hair salon. For the last few years she had told her hair dresser that we did this program, and they have donated boxes for the past 2 years.”

Shiloh Community Church (Tiverton, Ontario)
Number of Shoeboxes: 412

Shiloh UB’s involvement in Operation Christmas Child was mentioned previously. Donna Doern, who heads up the program for the church, added the following:

“We do our shoe boxes as a joint effort from our small rural church. About 25 people attend per Sunday. Everyone brings/buys different items needed for the boxes and we complile them into sections–school supplies, personal care items, clothing for different sizes, fun stuff like stuffed animals, toys, etc., hard candy, and balloons.

“This year we did our project over the summer months and set up the basement of the church to accomodate the items coming in. We made up the boxes and in each box put a sticker inside that read ‘cheque in other box’ so the head office would not waste time looking for payment in that box as we write one cheque to cover the entire amount of boxes. We also put the boy/girl stickers on the boxes ahead of time as well to save time at the end.

“All you had to do was indicate the age category on the front of the box on the sticker. Then the fun began. A few of us went up several times during the hot summer days to work on the preparation for packing the boxes. One of our 87-year-old ladies came faithfully to unpackage crayons, toothbrushes, pencil crayons, etc. She even put together some of the boxes and labelled them. She was a wonderful help in all avenues of the adventure. She took great delight in seeing the finished product, as at the top of each box was a stuffed animal or doll which completed the smile both for her and for the child receiving the box.

“We all had great fun seeing the new items coming in weekly to add to our collection for the shoeboxes and to see the number of shoeboxes growing.

“To help fund the shipment cost of $7 per box, we have a ladies Friendship luncheon in May. The ladies are most generous in their giving, knowing the cause and the number of smiles that will be created by the gift of the boxes. We usually raise enough money to send at least 200-300 boxes. Further funding comes from either yard sales or from the men of our church who contribute in many ways as well.

We always stress that this not any sort of a competition, but rather a blessing the Lord is using us in helping others in countries and places unknown to us. He is channelling donated items and funds for the project simply through us and we are more than willing to work alongside Him. We count it a blessing and privelege to be a part of so many smiles on so many childrens faces worldwide.”

How About Your Church?
How many Christmas Child shoeboxes did your church collect this year? We’d like to share that on UBCentral for other churches. We even have a form you can use to report what your church did with Operation Christmas Child.