BY DAN HILDEBRAN
General manager
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—Operation Christmas Child’s central drop-off team leader for the Santa Fe River area said she expected churches and volunteers to donate around 14,000 shoebox-sized Christmas gift boxes for children overseas.
Diane Michel said she expected deliveries from three other drop-off locations: First Baptist Church of Alachua, First Baptist Palatka, and Southside Baptist in Palatka during the drive’s final day. Michel’s own congregation, Trinity Baptist in Keystone Heights, donated 2,000 boxes in the effort.
Operation Christmas Child is a ministry of the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse.
“Our mission is to provide local partners around the world with shoeboxes filled with small toys, hygiene items, and school supplies as a means of reaching out to children in their own communities with the Good News of Jesus Christ,” Samaritan’s Purse said on its website. “We ship these simple gifts outside the United States to children affected by war, poverty, natural disaster, famine, and disease.”
Michel said that whenever a church, another drop-off location, or a family drops off gift boxes, the central drop-off volunteers spend time with them.
“We pray with them over the shoe boxes,” she said. “We let them share a testimony, and then we pray over their boxes, and we open it up for prayer with everyone. People laugh, and people cry. It’s a very touching and emotional time.”
