Tagged With: Samaritan’s Purse

Operation Christmas Child

Photograph taken on Friday, December 06, 2019 by Henry
Operation Christmas Child Processing Center

Operation Christmas Child Processing Center

I went with Cathy, Aaron, and Alice to the Operation Christmas Child processing center this evening Cathy’s annual evening of processing boxes. She’s been many times but this was my first time. Aaron has also gone with her a few times before. We had a good time and got a fair amount done. Along with the hundreds of other volunteers today, we processed 64,795 boxes going to Malawi and Togo. That’s a pretty respectable number. It’s a fairly loud and hectic place but everyone is generally in a good mood and there is plenty of laughter. We were impressed by a few large collections of boxes filled by individual groups, especially one where each box had a hand knitted item, obviously made with much love.

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Operation Christmas Child

Photograph taken on Sunday, November 22, 2020 by Henry
Operation Christmas Child Boxes

Operation Christmas Child Boxes

It’s that time of the year again. Cathy held back a bit this year. In 2017 she planned to make six boxes but that grew into 12. I think that was the high water mark for her. In the last two years she’s kept closer to plan and this year she only went one over her planned four boxes, which is quite an accomplishment for her. It was harder because everything seems harder this year, particularly shopping, but she went on a couple outings to fill her boxes. Since I’m actually posting this more than three weeks after the fact, it’s pretty clear she didn’t pick up any unwanted viruses on her shopping trips, at least not anything with a gestation period shorter than that. We didn’t volunteer at their packing center this year, either. It’s sad that something as worthwhile as this is impacted so much by this pandemic, but there you are. Hopefully next year things will be back to some semblance of normal.

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Operation Christmas Child

Photograph taken on Sunday, November 17, 2024 by Henry
Cathy with Operation Christmas Child Boxes

Cathy with Operation Christmas Child Boxes

When Dorothy was little, Cathy would help her and Amy, who lived next door, put together boxes for Operation Christmas Child every year. They would fill them for girls the same age as Dorothy and Amy. Dorothy and Amy are grown and Amy doesn’t live next door any more (we both moved in different directions) but Cathy still puts together some number of boxes. She’s done as few as two and as many as 12. She generally plans to fill six. As you can see here, her six turned into eight, which is not at all unusual. She had bought one extra box, knowing she often goes over, but then took an empty box from church because she had enough things for one more.

Clearly, Cathy is a big fan of Operation Christmas Child, which is a ministry of Samaritan’s Purse, an organization founded in 1970 by Robert Pierce (who also one of the founders of World Vision International) and with Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham as president.

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