Platte County Samaritans participate in Operation Christmas Child

Mark DeLap
Posted 12/2/20

681 shoeboxes left Memorial Baptist Church Nov. 23 by trailer on their international journey into the hands of a boy or girl who otherwise may not have received anything for Christmas this year.

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Platte County Samaritans participate in Operation Christmas Child

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WHEATLAND –As children, shoeboxes were saved for letters, baseball cards and treasures. For Operation Christmas Child they have become a gift of hope and the message that people half-a-world away truly care.
In Platte County Operation Christmas Child was alive and well and full of donations that were trailered to CrossPoint Fellowship Church in Cheyenne en route to the main distribution center in Denver. 681 shoeboxes left Memorial Baptist Church Nov. 23 by trailer on their international journey into the hands of a boy or girl who otherwise may not have received anything for Christmas this year.
According to Samaritan’s Purse International Relief which has been operating for over 50 years, “The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to provide God’s love in a tangible way to children in need around the world, and together with the local church worldwide, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

A ministry that is headed up by Franklin Graham, son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, Samaritan’s Purse developed the mission within the ministry in 1993.
Samaritan’s Purse’s website says, “In the summer of 1993, Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham received a call from a man in England asking if he’d be willing to fill shoeboxes with gifts for children in war-torn Bosnia. Franklin agreed, but figured Christmas was months away. He forgot about the promise until he received a call back around Thanksgiving asking about the gifts.
Franklin asked his friend the late Pastor Ross Rhoads of Calvary Church of Charlotte to see if he could help with the need. A Sunday shortly afterward, Pastor Rhoads demonstrated for his congregation how to fill a shoebox with simple gifts and encouraged them to include a letter to the child as well. Within weeks, the church had 11,000 shoeboxes lining their hallways.”
Since 1993, 178 million children in more than 150 countries have received a shoebox donated by ordinary people and shipped via Operation Christmas Child.
“Wheatland Bible Church used to be the drop-off center in Wheatland,” said Cindy Witt who attends Memorial Baptist and has taken on the duties for organization of this year’s donation center. “Each community has a drop-off center and the lady who was in charge of it before, her daughter had a baby just recently so she couldn’t do it, so our church was the drop-off center this year.”
The drop-off center collected boxes for a week prior to loading the trailer to ship to Cheyenne, and according to Witt, boxes are filled by people all year long. She also mentioned that the boxes can be purchased from Hobby Lobby or can be purchased online and can be plastic or cardboard.
“People can also use regular shoeboxes,” Witt said. “Each box gets a scanning code, and people can keep track of where their box ends up. It’s an international mission, so none of them stay in the United States. They also send some to Indian reservations within the United States.”
There were 16 volunteers from Memorial Baptist that helped out at the drop-off center.
Memorial Baptist Church’s pastor, Chris Furl who was also helping with the packing of the trailer said, “Wheatland Bible has been doing it for years, and they wanted to transfer it over to somebody else, so Cindy said she would take it. We love it. We’re excited and so glad to have Cindy head it up. I did it in North Carolina where their associational office is located and we did like 4,000 shoeboxes there and there were a ton more people there.”