Jambo! Say it with me: Jambo! Jambo is the way that we would greet one another in Tanzania, Africa, and I’m so excited to share with you just briefly about Operation Christmas Child. I love seeing your displays; I love the tree up in the front. This is just fabulous! I can tell that you have a heart and a passion for what God is doing around the world through the simple gift of a shoebox.
As you can tell, Operation Christmas Child is involved with three aspects: evangelism, discipleship, and multiplication. Those are our three key terms because we believe that every child needs the opportunity to have hope. How many know that children today just need hope? They need to know there’s a better tomorrow, and one way that we can bring hope is the hope of the Gospel.
Well, Central Ohio team, our goal is 23,000 this year—that’s six counties here in Ohio. Last year, twenty-two thousand five hundred and ninety-nine shoeboxes came in for six counties. Yes, I was excited! In fact, we beat our goal. Our goal last year was 20,000, and we actually had a bit higher, so we said let’s just up it a little bit and see what happens. So, twenty-three thousand!
But I want you to hear that every box counts. It’s not about the big number; whatever boxes you are packing, every child needs that box. Let me share just briefly. As you look at some pictures, evangelism and discipleship lead to multiplication of new believers and churches worldwide, no matter what denomination. I was in Baptist churches, Lutheran churches, and I saw Presbyterian churches. It does not matter the denomination because we are one in Christ, and isn’t that wonderful? That we are brothers and sisters because of who Jesus is.
Well, previously unreached people groups like the Himba and the Namibia, where the name of Jesus has never been heard, are in hard-to-reach places like the Pacific Islands as well, and in many places where access to the Gospel is truly restricted. The great thing is that many, many countries now we are in—we are actually in over a hundred and twenty. That’s amazing! Amazing, amazing work.
Since 2009, 30.9 million shoebox recipients have participated in the Greatest Journey, with more than 21.7 million graduates and over 15 million decisions for Christ. So, I want to show a few pictures of Africa from my trip in 2019.
In this first one, we are at a distribution, and every child that comes—we had about 150 at five different distributions. I was there only for one week with a team of about 32-34 people, and so it was just a fantastic time to see that, first, the boxes really are delivered to the children. This is called the Integrity of the shoebox. That’s our term, and we value that integrity.
One of the things that we share with people about integrity is that when people bring their boxes in, you don’t sort or process—that actually happens at Charlotte or Boone. Because we do that, it keeps the integrity of the shoebox. So, don’t worry about what your neighbor is packing or they’re not packing; we’re going to take care of that at the Charlotte, North Carolina processing center.
The great thing is that processing center will open every box carefully. They will not remove any items; they will simply check to make sure, is this a safe box to go? It doesn’t have liquids or something that will destroy the box. But it will also check for things—such as we really don’t want to pack a can of spam, right? Because it’s food.
So, one day I was at the processing center, and guess what? A can of spam was in a shoebox. I said, ‘Look, girls, lunch is on me!’ I took the can of spam out and put it down below my table. We have buckets to put the inappropriate items, and then we replace any item that is removed because of that; it gets a new item added to the box just to replace it. So, the boxes really are given out with integrity.
This next picture here is of me with a child in Tanzania. I always say pack with a purpose. This was actually a chip clip. Now, the chip clip—I was trying to figure out how do I translate that so that this child knows what it is? I said, let me be creative, and I put it right in my hair as a hairpiece. You know what? The girls loved it; it was no problem! But I say pack with a purpose—make sure everything in the box really does have a purpose for that child.
You can go to the next one. Yeah, this picture I just absolutely love. I actually got to help this child open their box, and inside the box was this big bow. Isn’t she just darling with that big bow? At first, she was looking at it like, ‘I’m not quite sure what that is.’ So I put it on my head and smiled, then I reached over and put it on her head, and you should have seen her light up!
As we got ready to leave that particular site, I noticed that she still had her bow on her head. What a great, great time! There are so many pictures, but this one will be my final picture. I loved going because it was a 50-year dream. What do I mean by that? I was 58 years old when I went on this trip, but when I was eight years old, God spoke to me as a child.
I thought, ‘Now how would I ever go to Africa? I was just a child.’ But I heard my local missionaries come through, and I had heard the stories. I went home that night as an eight-year-old child and prayed, ‘Lord, someday I would like to go somewhere into another country.’ That night, I had a dream. That dream was I was in Tanzania, Africa. I did not know that was Tanzania, but I was there, and in that dream, I was giving out these boxes.
I didn’t understand it as a child. Later in college, I had the same dream. Now that made me a little nervous because I said, ‘Uh, I’ve had this dream before; what is this about, God?’ Then when I received the phone call to travel on this trip, this is really the picture that I saw in my dream.
What an amazing trip! It has totally changed my life even further to just share the simple good news of Jesus Christ with children around the world. I want to thank you as a congregation for packing shoeboxes. Be sure to pick up your box if you haven’t had an opportunity. Lovely decorations, and I thank you so much for this opportunity to share just a few brief moments about Operation Christmas Child. Blessings to you!