Church offers simple gifts for kids in need

Charlotte Young knows that a shoe box of gifts can make a world of difference to a child.

That’s why she and other volunteers from First Lutheran Church in Fremont have been involved in Operation Christmas Child.

Started in 1993, the program grew out of the conviction that most people would respond to a request to help one child at Christmas with a box of simple gifts selected just for him.

Franklin Graham (son of evangelist Billy Graham) shipped the first shoe boxes. Last year 7.6 million children received a shoe box gift at Christmastime through the project.

Graham wanted children in particular to know that God loves all children. Shoe boxes are given to the poorest children in the poorest countries. They are delivered to children who are living in desperate conditions �” struggling with AIDS, living in slums and places of extreme poverty and children who have lost their families.

The directions are easy.

Once a person decides to participate, they select the age range and whether they want to fill a box for a boy or a girl. Then comes the fun �” shopping for age-appropriate toys, maybe a bar of soap or some hard candy for a child they will never see. Some people have enclosed a picture of themselves or of their family or a letter to their child. It all gets packed in a shoe box along with a check for $7 to cover transportation and handling costs. Perhaps the box will be wrapped with bright Christmas paper. A sticker is taped to the outside that gives age and sex information and it’s taken to a nearby relay center.

For the last two years First Lutheran has served as this area’s relay center.

“We are a drop site so area people don’t have to drive to Benson Baptist Church, our area’s collection center,” explained Young, the co-coordinator. “This year, people from Uehling, Colon, Arlington, Valley, Mead, Elkhorn and Fremont brought 449 shoe boxes to our First Lutheran relay center.”

Churches and some Christian radio stations begin telling people about the program in October so boxes can reach the children by Christmas. Boxes collected in Fremont will go to children in Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Abkhazia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Ukraine, Mongolia and China. Most countries allow a Christmas story book to be included with the other presents.

“We tell our Sunday School children that anything they would like, these children would like,” Young said.

Young tells the story of a woman from Nebraska who traveled to China to do mission work for her church. The shoe boxes are supposed to be delivered at Christmas but for some reason, this particular batch had been delayed in customs so that she was there when the boxes arrived. She was able to help distribute them to the children.

“One of the older kids opened his box and there was a letter inside,” Young said. “He took it to one of the missionaries asking them to translate it for him. So the kids gathered around to hear the letter as it was read. It was from a policeman in Tennessee. He told the boy that though he didn’t know him, he loved him and God also loved him. China doesn’t allow Christian tracts to be enclosed in the boxes, but the letter somehow made it through. The main thing for the boy was his amazement that a policeman could care about him. The woman was able to get the policeman’s name and she contacted him, telling him what had happened and that a policeman could care about a child half way around the world was very important to one little boy. ‘You always wonder,’ he said, ‘if someone gets your letter and picture.’”

The project is volunteer intense.

Volunteers manned the tables at First Lutheran, baked cookies for those volunteers and loaded the boxes into vans to transport to Benson Baptist Church where a mountain of shoe boxes had been gathered from all over the area. The 11,347 shoe boxes were sorted by more volunteers. Then the boxes continued their journey �” this time to Minnesota to a distribution center where volunteers of all ages sorted the boxes. They check each box to make certain that gifts are age-appropriate and that there are no war toys like guns or other weapons enclosed. The checks are removed and gathered and the shoe boxes travel along a conveyor belt to be loaded into trucks for transportation to the place that will ship them to their final destinations.

Young and co-coordinator Meri Jo Soe work with the Sunday School program at First Lutheran. Children are encouraged to pack a shoe box for another child. This year’s boxes were blessed at worship services on Nov. 18.

“The shoe box project is truly ecumenical,” Young said. “The Benson Baptist Church receives boxes from 314 area churches. We don’t check to see if the money is in the box or even look in the boxes when we receive them. Each box is a personal thing and we do nothing to take away from the integrity of the gift. Our job is to receive them gratefully and send them on their way.”

Franklin Graham began Operation Christmas Child because churches are generous in responding to physical needs like food and clothing when disaster strikes or in response to people in need. Graham wanted to let children know of God’s love for them. Millions of them, most of them feeling alone and forgotten, will find evidence of that love in a bright shoe box from America and 449 of them just might know that someone near Fremont feels the same way.