Jesus said, “You must let little children come to me, and you must never stop them. The kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children like these!” Matthew 19:14 Phillips
Every Fall people begin packing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child to send to underprivileged children all over the world. Even during the pandemic it wasn’t hindered millions of boxes filled with precious gifts were delivered to some of the most remote places. Some of the children receiving a Christmas gift for the very first time. Last night we had our Zoom Area Update Meeting. We were all given a chance to share what our favorite part of OCC is. Although all of it is amazing, the stories of the shoebox recipients is what touches my heart and gives me an amazing way to tell people not only about it, but how amazing God is. This year two more stories were shared.
In Ecuador a little girl longed to have a set of markers. Everytime her mother and her would go into town she would see them. But her family didn’t have the money to get them for her. She kept hoping that one day she would be able to buy them. Then Operation Christmas Child came to her village with boxes filled with toys. To her surprise when she opened the box there was a set of markers! She couldn’t believe her eyes, not only did she get markers, but socks and pencils, paper and other things. What makes this amazing is the boxes are given our randomly, After the boxes were opened they were then told that the boxes came from people who loved and cared about them and about the love of Jesus. She could see how Jesus loved her so much that He made a way to get her markers that she longed for and she accepted His gift of Salvation.
Another girl in Africa, was given a box in it was a note that the person giving it loved her and so did Jesus. She loved all her gifts, but she was mostly interested in the book The Amazing Journey about the life of Jesus. She attended church weekly and learned all the things in the book and upon completion she was given a New Testament. She was so excited about the love of Jesus that she began sharing Him with her friends, and they started attending church with her and in a short period of time they too accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. All three of them spoke about how Jesus knowing Jesus made them happy and they are sharing Him with other children. The cildren then go home and tell others about Jesus to their families and their lives are changed too.
The stories could go on, but these are only two stories out of 10.5 million boxes that were handed out for Christmas of 2021! Out of those 10.5 million, 9.1 million were from the US. The Mid-Atlantic region collected 610,234 and the Lehigh Valley collected and sent 15,501 boxes. Statistics show that at least 5 more additional people will be reached for Jesus for every box, that means that an aditional 77,505 people will have a changed life forever and it was all because a child received a shoebox filled with love.
Perhaps it truly is the little things that make the biggest differences in our lives and those we don’t even know. But God does!
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