My history of filling and donating shoe boxes goes back twenty years or more. When daughters were small and still of the age to be enamored with trinkets that were 'made in Japan', it was a delight to purchase enough surprises to fill a box. We saved the biggest shoe boxes we could find, and would wrap them with colorful Christmas print paper. Make carefully considered purchases at the Just-a-Buck store, and pack the boxes full of goodies. Then take them to the pick up point for the Samaritan's Purse Christmas Child Shoebox program.
At one point, in talking to my brother several years ago, I heard that he and a group from his church would go to Charlotte, NC and spend a day in a (very cold) warehouse near the airport. Where they would stand next to a conveyor belt: checking in boxes, looking for contraband like toy guns or liquids that were not approved, adding pertinent reading material. Then, like piecing together a jig-saw puzzle, packing all those different sized boxes in cargo containers. Recently one of the daughters said that the year she was in India in late January, she saw kids receiving gifts in the form of Samaritan's Purse boxes, so I guess 'Christmas Child' knows no season, as long as there in an opportunity to spread the Word.
I continue to shop for little girl-y stuff, and fill three boxes every year. Someone suggested using plastic shoe boxes, with lids, that the recipient can keep and use to store treasures in. I took my boxes to the drop off last night. Packed to the gills with: crayons, coloring book, word-search book, educational card games, hard candy, sox, hairbrush, things that would amuse/entertain little pre-school girls. But not to benefit the Franklin Graham ministry.
This year the boxes will go to native American children through a ministry that is based in Donalsonville GA. A friend from church has a friend in southwest GA who operates a program that serves the Navajo nation. I understand that the central collection point is Albany, GA. A man who is a retired long-haul truck drive will take a semi-truck load of boxes to Shiprock, AZ in early December, for the mission there to distribute to children in the Four Corners area.
To the three cute little dark haired, bright-eyed Native American girls, who get my boxes: Merry Christmas!
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