COURT HOUSE — The culmination of over two months planning and collection for Operation Christmas Child took place at First United Methodist Church of Cape May Court House Nov. 20.
Throughout the early afternoon, church members joined to load 78 large cardboard boxes onto trailers for transit to a Vineland United Methodist Church, which had been designated as a regional collection center for the operation.
Those cartons were filled with 1,132 red-and-green shoeboxes that had been filled by church members, youth groups, scouts and other volunteers with a variety of small gifts for boys and girls around the globe this Christmas. Among the items were crayons, pens, T-shirts, balls, stuffed animals and hygiene items.
Dennise and John Reardon Sr., coordinators at the Court House church, oversaw the loading and tallying of the boxes. The previous Sunday evening, Nov. 13, church members had gathered to put bulk items into the shoeboxes. Many families packed their own shoeboxes for a boy or girl. Some even went on-line to track where the boxes were to go.
On Nov. 21, those cartons were to be loaded onto two tractor-trailers at the Vineland church for relay to Boone, N.C. where they will join others from the Mid Atlantic States and carry the Christmas spirit and message to children in less fortunate nations around the world.
All who participated in the collection had been given literature about the program, which included a quote from Franklin Graham, president, Samaritan’s Purse, which oversees Operation Christmas Child, “Pack your shoe box with love, send it with prayer, and share the Good News of Jesus Christ with a hurting child. That’s the power of a simple gift.”
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