While many Caribou families are busy with holiday activities, a group of local volunteers are focused on filling empty shoeboxes with school supplies, toys, hygiene items and notes of encouragement for needy kids overseas. Caribou families are currently participating in the world’s largest Christmas project of its kind — Operation Christmas Child — an effort that has hand-delivered 86 million gifts to children worldwide since 1993.
This year-round project of Samaritan’s Purse is coming to its peak, as local businesses, churches and schools prepare to collect gift-filled shoe boxes during National Collection Week, Nov. 14-21. Volunteers may drop off their shoebox gifts at the Caribou United Baptist Church on High Street in Caribou, helping kids in 100 countries know they are loved and not forgotten.
Operation Christmas Child, a project of international Christian relief and evangelism organization Samaritan’s Purse, uses whatever means necessary to reach suffering children around the world with these gifts of hope. To register shoebox gifts and find out the destination country, use the form found at www.samaritanspurse.org/occ.
