For years, Clarke County has participated in Operation Christmas Child and packed shoe boxes with goodies to send to children in other countries. The final number for how many boxes that were sent this past year have been confirmed: a whopping 2,275 boxes.
“Operation Christmas Child is like a passion. Once you start, you just keep wanting to add more and more the following year,” proclaimed Dianne Sellers with Samaritan’s Purse and Operation Christmas Child. “They get the book, The Greatest Journey, and that’s how they hear the story of Jesus. Clarke County collected 2,275 boxes. We have a six county area, and from all of those, we had 29, 063 boxes.”
Dianne continued working with the shoeboxes at one of the many processing centers in the country.
“I was able to volunteer to work at the processing center,” explained Dianne. “The closest one is Atlanta, but I decided to go with Boone, which is a calmer, small town area. We had 12 from our church that went, and it was a very interesting experience. We went through each box to take out things that were not allowed. We signed up for three days, but we actually got through with that on Wednesday afternoon. It was so organized, and our boxes went to the Ukraine.”
Overall, the year was successful, and she has hopes that this next Christmas season will have even more shoe boxes donated. They are always open to more churches or organizations to participate and donate.
For any church organization that would like to participate, simply email diannesellers1953@yahoo.com for information.
