Operation Christmas Child

Dick and Linda spent Thanksgiving this year in Denver, Colorado volunteering their time at one of the Operation Christmas Child's processing centers . . .

(For those of you who many not know, Operation Christmas Child is a ministry of Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse organization. It is a ministry that brings joy and hope to young children in desperate situations around the world through gift-filled shoe boxes and the Good News of God's love!)

Dick is the Area Coordinator of OCC for the Western South Dakota region and as part of his involvement, he and Linda spent 2 full days at the processing center in Denver over Thanksgiving. The center operated from 8:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. sorting through and organizing boxes that were getting ready to be delivered to children all over the world (this particular processing center was going to be delivering the Christmas boxes to children in Mexico). In just one day, the center processed 50,000 boxes and over the next few weeks it is estimated that 6 MILLION boxes will be processed (with about 55,000 volunteers) in 6 processing centers. Below are a few pictures that Dick took of the behind the sceens operation of this AMAZING organization . . .




On a much smaller scale, a few weeks ago we got together as a family at Dick and Linda's and filled our own Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes to be shipped to little kiddos in hopes of brightening their Christmas with warm wishes, goodies and God's love. In just a couple of hours we filled 52 boxes with soap, wash clothes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs/brushes, paper, coloring crayons, glue sticks, pens/pencils, ponytail holders and jewlery for the girls, cars and bouncy balls for the boys, jump ropes, toppers, beany babies, crocks, hats, socks, underwear, t-shirts and of course - LOTS of candy!! It was an awesome afternoon and so rewarding to know that our little family would hopefully make the difference in a little child's life.

Josh and I are hoping to take our involvement in this wonderful organization to a new level next year and get Operation Christmas Child active in our church. We have close to 1000 people that attend our church each Sunday . . . think of the mountains we could move in our church alone?!?!?!