Operation Christmas Child

I knew I had many things to catch up on over these past few weeks. I refuse to get behind in blogging. By golly, if one is going to do something, they should do it well, and often.

Right after Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping, Carley and I took a road trip with my mom and sister up to Atlanta to work with Operation Christmas Child. My sister, Nadine, introduced us last year to the joy of helping this ministry by working in one of the distribution centers. I am going to be up front and honest with all of you, it is hard work! Worth every stiff muscle and sore feet that can be soaked in hot water after a five hour shift of standing on one's feet.

The old adage says a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are my many thousands of words.

Imagine walking into a building seeing all these boxes knowing in 2-3 weeks they all have to be processed, boxed up and shipped out. A little over whelming don't you think? When we arrived to the warehouse on Tuesday, the warehouse had already processed 176,000 boxes. That was done in one weeks time. It takes countless of volunteers to get the job done.

This is a picture of a flat of boxes that have already been separated into an age group. Before the boxes are clear wrapped by ages, they have already gone through one process call sorting. We didn't work in sorting this year but here is a picture from last year.

Behind each worker is a flat of boxes. The worker opens the box and looks for inappropriate items that we were told to remove along with money that may be found in the boxes to help pay for shipping. The workers give the box to another worker across from them, and that worker places the box on the appropriate age category.

This is the assembly line and the next stop for boxes. Behind each worker is a pallet of boxes that have been separated into age groups. The worker takes the box, opens the box for a last look for any inappropriate items and to fill the boxes with other items if somethings have had to be taken out. Once the box is clear for shipping, then the worker tapes the box, places the box on the assembly line and pushes the box to the end of the line.

Nadine and my mom on the line

This is where Carley and I worked. We were at the end of the line. The end of the line is where the boxes are now separated into boy and girl boxes. As you can see by this picture, the boxes collect rather quickly at the end of the line. All these boxes were packed into large boxes that will be placed on a ship some time after December 13. Each large box MUST have at least 14 boxes. Carley and I averaged 16-18 boxes the first day we worked. Believe it or not, it was noticed because the next day when we worked, the Samaritan Purse personal brought it to our attention to thank us for the work we did.

On the second day Carley was tasked as the e-give girl. Samaritan's Purse did something different this year that none of us were aware that they did. This year one could donate on line and print out a tracking number to place on their shoebox to be sent out. The shoebox is scanned from the time it is packed into the large box to be sent out of the warehouse to let the donor know when and where the shoebox left. Once the shoebox is delivered, the shoebox will be scanned again to let the donor know where and when the shoebox arrived at its final destination.


This is the tired and very exhausted crew that left Wednesday around 1pm and then drove back to Florida.

If you ever get the opportunity to volunteer to work in a warehouse packing boxes, I say go for it. Every box that I touched and all the other boxes that were being sent from all over the United States, God will use in a mighty way. I am so glad that we had the opportunity to take part in what God is doing with shoe boxes.