With November here, people are now thinking in earnest about Christmas shopping.
However, for the past several weeks, parishioners at Bethel Bible Chapel and several other churches throughout the Sault and Algoma District have been packing shoeboxes with useful items to be sent as Christmas gifts to children in developing countries.
The local effort is part of Operation Christmas Child, an annual international program in which thousands of shoeboxes filled with school supplies, toys and hygiene items are sent to needy children around the world by evangelical Christian churches in Canada, the U.S. and U.K.
Bethel is the Sault and Algoma District drop-off point for Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.
"Our church really supports this ministry and we go full tilt on it,” said Edo St. Pierre, a Bethel Bible Chapel member and Operation Christmas Child Sault Ste. Marie and Area logistics coordinator, speaking to SooToday.
“I’ve been involved with Operation Christmas Child for 12 years and we’ve been doing it at Bethel for 20 years. It’s been done in the Sault for 24 years. There was another church downtown that used to do it, then it evolved to us.”
Operation Christmas Child was launched locally at the Gospel Hall, an evangelical Christian church located at the corner of Wellington Street East and Spring Street.
St. Pierre, his wife Joy and other Bethel parishioners are heavily involved with the program, estimating that 200 shoeboxes filled with gifts will be sent out from Bethel alone this year.
“There will probably be about 2,000 boxes this year from churches across the district. Pre-COVID we were doing up to 4,000 or 5,000. Since COVID everything dropped down but our numbers started going up last year. We’re looking forward to growing it again,” St. Pierre said.
The shoeboxes are uniform in size, supplied by the Calgary-based Canadian office of Samaritan's Purse.
Samaritan's Purse is an evangelical Christian organization established in 1970 that has provided aid to people around the world who have been victimized by war, poverty, natural disasters, disease, and famine.
Franklin Graham, well known U.S. evangelist and Samaritan’s Purse president, helped launch Operation Christmas Child in 1993.
Locally, St. Pierre said he has about 500 shoeboxes on hand in advance of every year’s Sault and Algoma campaign.
The list of countries that receive Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes changes every year, St. Pierre said.
Countries receiving boxes from Canada this year include El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ukraine and The Philippines.
Once the shoeboxes are made available in the fall, church parishioners fill them by purchasing necessary items for the children who will receive them.
“They contain anything that has to do with school work, like colouring books, crayons, pencil crayons, because in some countries, if these children do not have school supplies they cannot go to school,” St. Pierre said.
Toys in the shoeboxes include stuffed animals and small soccer balls and footballs.
“Soccer balls are the best. They have a lot of fun with those,” St. Pierre said.
The boxes cannot contain liquids or any toys that would remind a child of war.
A well-stuffed box contains approximately $30 of useful items, St. Pierre said.
There is a suggested $10 donation fee for shipping but it is not a prerequisite to pack a shoe box.
“The ten dollars we ask for, for shipping, is because these boxes are getting shipped halfway around the world, so ten dollars is pretty cheap. Locally you can pay ten dollars to have a pizza delivered. That’s a good way to put it into perspective,” St. Pierre said.
“We don't discourage people from doing the shoeboxes because of cost. If you can’t afford to fill a shoebox and fill it up halfway, we’ll top it up. If you can afford to fill it up abundantly that’s really great because we want to put as many items in these boxes as we can.”
“We start in the second week of September, getting in contact with churches and organizations. I make phone calls or go and see them, get them set up with the shoeboxes they need for the annual campaign, and then we start filling them up in October,” St. Pierre said.
The week of Nov. 13 is National Collection Week for this year’s Operation Christmas Child campaign.
Boxes will be collected at Bethel at 1 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 17, to be shipped off by transport truck to Calgary before being distributed to children around the world.
“Last year we did over 18,000 shoeboxes from Bethel and other churches. 1,892 to be exact. We are essentially the drop off location from Elliot Lake to Wawa. We get boxes from Elliot Lake, Wawa, Thessalon, Bruce Mines and Desbarats, they get dropped off here. I have a team of gentlemen that’ll help me put them in cartons this week for five days and get them ready to be shipped,” St. Pierre said.
“My wife and I pack a lot of shoeboxes ourselves because we get a lot of stuff donated to us. People will go to the dollar store or bring something in from home and bring it to the church. So, we’ll probably pack a couple of hundred more shoeboxes while we’re here this week.”
Feedback from abroad after children receive their gift boxes is heartwarming, St. Pierre said.
“We get letters and photos. It’s a really great feeling. They’re so excited to get these gifts. They’re very thankful.”
“If we were to do a mission trip we would be able to take our boxes and go to one of those countries and give these shoeboxes out. That’s something we’re looking forward to doing in the next couple of years. I personally have not done so yet but I hear it’s quite an experience.”
St. Pierre, who worked for the City of Sault Ste. Marie for over 30 years, said retirement has given him more time to devote to Operation Christmas Child.
However, St. Pierre said it’s more than a retirement hobby.
“Personally it’s a fulfilling feeling. I get a chance to do something that I feel the Holy Spirit has put into me, to work for Christ and this is the way for me to do it. I like touching people’s hearts.”
Operation Christmas Child boxes can be dropped off at Bethel Bible Chapel, located at 686 Black Rd., at these times:
- Monday, Nov. 13: 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.
- Tuesday, Nov. 14: 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.
- Wednesday, Nov. 15: 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.
- Thursday, Nov. 16: 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.
- Friday, Nov. 17: 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.