Christian Fellowship School students pack shoeboxes for children around the world

Lucy Munns stayed focused as she chose items to fill a shoebox that would end up in the hands of another child somewhere in the world.

Lucy, 8, a third-grader at Christian Fellowship School, proudly showed off the items in her stuffed shoebox when she had finished. There was a doll and a stuffed animal, hair ties, other "hair stuff," a washcloth, shorts and other arts and crafts.

"After they get it, we can be friends," Lucy said. She had included her address on a paper in the box.

She's packed shoeboxes for a few years now, she said.

"I feel good about it," Lucy said. "It's really fun."

It's the 28th year Christian Fellowship School has taken part in Operation Christmas Child, a global project of Samaritan's Purse, a religious nonprofit.

But this year for the first time, the school made it into a party. Students from each class filed into the auditorium and filled their Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes with donated items. In past years, students have filled the shoeboxes at home or in their classrooms.

They had a goal of filling 250 shoeboxes on Friday, a teacher said.

Instrumental Christmas music played over speakers and could sometimes be heard over the chatter of children.

Each class took a group photo with their boxes when they finished.

"Say 'Merry Christmas and Jesus loves you,'" the photographer told the kids.

It's a special project, said organizer Rachel Couture, a teacher at the school.

"We ship these all over the world to spread the love of Jesus," Couture said.

Max Vikhter, head of school at Christian Fellowship, called it "a wonderful tradition."

"Our kids have been waiting for this," he said.

And Lucy's hope that the recipient of her shoebox would become her friend? It's not uncommon, said retired teacher Darlene Mueller, who was volunteering on Friday.

When her own daughter was in fifth grade, she included her home address in a shoebox, in which she included a $5 necklace.

"I thought that was a little extravagant," Mueller said, but added she allowed her daughter to include it.

A month or so later, her daughter received a letter from a girl in Indonesia who received her shoebox. They remained pen pals through around the end of high school, before losing track of each other.

Then a few years ago, at a family gathering, Mueller's son asked if they knew someone in Indonesia who had made a friend request on Facebook. It was Mueller's daughter's pen pal. Her daughter's last name had changed after she had married, but the girl in Indonesia knew her son's name from her daughter's letters, Mueller said.

"Those two have become friends on Facebook," she said.

And the lifelong connection began with a shoebox from a child at Christian Fellowship School.

Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573-815-1719. He's on Twitter at @rmckinney9.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Operation Christmas Child connects children from Columbia, worldwide