Community collects gifts for children around the world

Even in the spring and summer, Debbie Samples thinks about Christmas. All year long she keeps an eye out for discounts on items for children. Even when it’s warm enough for her grandkids to have spent the day at the pool, she likes to take them shopping for other children, children they are likely to never meet, children half a world away.

For the last two years Debbie has been coordinating Wrens Baptist Church’s Operation Christmas Child project for Samaritan’s Purse. The church is a collection center for the county and surrounding area.

Last year their collection center contributed just under 400 gift boxes to the program and Debbie’s goal this year is more ambitious. She would like to see more than 500 boxes collected locally this year.

In addition to recruiting Sunday School classes, area schools and other groups to contribute, Debbie personally puts together gift boxes in honor of each of her 10 grandchildren.

“I think what I like most is you can be a missionary and stay right here,” Debbie said. “You can send these across the ocean and be a part of somebody’s life. It was also to teach my grandkids. We go shopping together and I let them pick something out and they know, this is not for you, this is for a child who doesn’t have what you have. And then we put it in a box and send to off to them. It’s about being generous.”

The program is a part of Franklin Graham’s, son of evangelist Billy Graham, Samaritan’s Purse, an organization based in Boone, NC, that was created to respond to the physical and spiritual needs of people in crisis situations.

“Christmas Child started in the early 90’s, during the war in Bosnia,” Debbie’s husband, George said. “It was a war-torn country with lots of kids in it and they wanted to do something special for the kids of Bosnia. So Graham asked a church in north Georgia to help and they got 11,000 boxes together for those children and since then it has been a regular thing.”

Over the last 29 years Samaritan’s Purse has collected more than 198 million shoebox gifts and delivered them through participating churches in more than 170 countries and territories. With a 2022 goal of reaching an additional 11 million children, the program expects to collect its 200 millionth shoebox gift this year.

Debbie said that the gift these children receive is so much bigger than anything that will fit in the box.

“When the children are given these boxes they are also given a little booklet about the Gospel and then they are asked if they want to come back and take a Bible study called The Greatest Journey,” she said. “This is all optional, it’s offered to them if they want it. When the children who choose to come back complete the Bible study, organizers hold a graduation ceremony and each one is presented a Bible in their own language.”

While participants like Debbie are picking up items throughout the year, churches in these other countries are looking for children who have yet to receive such a gift.

The goal this year, worldwide, is to send out 11 million gift boxes.

Preparing a Box 

Those who choose to contribute a box are encouraged to remember that this may be the only gift this child receives this Christmas and to consider including items that will be both fun as well as enduring. The items should be packed into a standard-sized shoe box.

“It’s best if they can fill the boxes,” Debbie said. “We have some pre-made boxes they can pick up at the church, at the Family Y in Wrens and we’re getting some to the Wrens Baptist Church Child Development Center. But you can use a regular shoe box.”

The box should include a nice “wow” gift, Debbie said, such as a stuffed animal or a deflated soccer ball and pump, a doll or shoes. Other items can include smaller play things such as toy cars, jump ropes, yo-yos; personal items such as combs or hair and tooth brushes, sunglasses, jewelry, flashlights with extra batteries, t-shirts, underwear, socks, school supplies and hygiene items.

The boxes should not include candy, toothpaste, gum, scary or war-related toys, any type of food or liquid, even toothpaste, medications or vitamins, breakable items, aerosol cans or used or damaged items.

Some families choose to include a personal note and photo from the family sending the box.

“You can choose an age range or gender you’d like the box to go to,” Debbie said. “There are labels for 2 to 4-year-olds, 5 to 9-year-olds and 10 to14-year-olds.”

Some of these labels include a QR code that allows families to track the destination of their specific box.

A donation of $10-per-box helps to cover shipping and other project costs.

Anyone wishing to contribute, but reluctant to create a box themselves, can also go online and donate $25 and those funds are used to create boxes that go to hard-to-reach areas where the items allowed may be more strictly monitored.

“She has put her heart and soul into it,” George said of his wife’s dedication to the program. “I’m one of those people who says, just give the money, but Debbie wants to have her hand in it all year long.”

“The stories you hear about the right thing getting to the right kid,” Debbie said. “This one boy got a pair of heavy gloves. Well, he was in an arid country. But his father was a cook and was already burning his hands and so he gave his father the gloves. There’s a reason for everything that goes in the boxes.”

This year participating sites will be collecting boxes Nov. 14 through Nov. 21. Wrens Baptist will be taking boxes Monday through Friday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Any individuals or groups who would like to volunteer to load boxes or trucks or assist the program in other ways are encouraged to reach out.  To contact the church call (706) 547-6596 or Debbie Samples at (706) 551-2869.

For more information on this this program visit samaritanspurse.org.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Community collects gifts for children around the world