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By Ayanna Eckblad

The Christmas season is fast approaching. For Bridge Community Church, and many other churches, the festivities kick off with another period of giving — shoebox season.

Bridge Community Church this year was Albert Lea’s official drop-off location for Operation Christmas Child. It has served this role for several years.

A branch of Samaritan’s Purse international relief, Operation Christmas Child takes shoeboxes filled with gifts to children in different parts of the world. The boxes are typically filled with toys, school supplies and personal care items.

In addition to the shoeboxes, Operation Christmas Child also brings a discipleship program called “The Greatest Journey,” in which children learn about the gospel. At the end of the program, they graduate and receive a Bible in their native language. According to Samaritan’s Purse’s website, ​​the program has led over 20.2 million children to make the decision to follow Jesus Christ.

Rose Olson has been an Operation Christmas Child collection volunteer for 14 years. Every November, the week before Thanksgiving, she leads six to seven volunteers in staying at the church for a few hours a day so other area churches, organizations and individuals can drop off their shoeboxes. One year, she also went to one of the shoebox processing centers in the Twin Cities before it relocated to Chicago.

Olson said she and the other volunteers always have a soft goal to collect more shoeboxes than the previous year. This year, not only did they meet their goal, but they had the highest quantity of shoeboxes they had ever collected in a single year. As of publication, Bridge Community Church had loaded a truck with 1,598 shoeboxes.

“I was really surprised that the number was as great as it was because of the economy the way it was,” said Cyndi Schmidt, another volunteer. “I didn’t think that people would be able to afford to do as many. They stepped up to the plate, and we got more than normal.”

Olson was also similarly shocked at how successful this year’s collection was. Sunday, she said, one church brought over 600 boxes to the church.

“They were stacked all over,” she said.

A relatively new feature of Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes is that people are now able to track what country the shoeboxes they packed go to.

This year, shoeboxes will go to Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Jamaica, Guyana, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Grenada, Belize, Republic of Congo, Mauritius, Madagascar and one other country that is not able to be disclosed.

Olson and Schmidt encouraged people to get involved with Operation Christmas Child, whether with a church or as an individual or family.

“We love to have individual families put boxes together,” Schmidt said. “You always want to encourage the young people to do this because, hopefully, that will just carry on and continue … the work that they do.”

Even though shoebox season has come to a close for the year, people can still become involved by collecting items for shoeboxes year round. Early autumn, for example, is a good time to buy school supplies while they are on sale.

This, Schmidt explained, makes filling the shoeboxes in November a lot easier.

Testimonials from former shoebox recipients are typically available on Samaritan’s Purse’s website, during volunteer training and other occasions.

However, this year the volunteers at Bridge Community Church were able to talk to someone who had received a shoebox and now works in their building.

Bridge Community Church shares their building with Zion Karen Baptist Church. One of the pastors at the church told them he had received an Operation Christmas Child shoebox when he was a child and staying in a refugee camp in Thailand. This year, he and some members of his congregation brought shoeboxes they had packed over to Olson and the other volunteers.

Olson said she always finds it really neat to hear from people who received shoeboxes. It was especially encouraging to hear that the discipleship program impacted the now youth pastor.

“I know a child is going to receive a box, and that makes it worthwhile,” Olson said. “It’s something that I like to do.”

To learn more about Operation Christmas Child, visit samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child.