For the eighth year, Hepzibah Baptist Church is helping to bring Christmas to Talladega a little early with Operation Christmas Child.

The church will serve as a collection point for the program during the week of Nov. 16 through Nov. 22. Operation Christmas Child was begun by Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief system, in 1993 to help families in poor countries recover from natural disasters and illness.

Since the program began, more than 61 million shoe boxes have been delivered to children all over the world who might otherwise not experience Christmas.

Hepzibah Baptist Church enjoys being a part of bringing Christmas to those who probably need it most.

When someone decides to participate in Operation Christmas Child, they are able to fill a shoe box with everything from more practical gifts such as toothbrushes and toothpaste and school supplies to more whimsical gifts such as dolls, hard candy and jewelry. These items may be purchased from any store, but most collection sites will recommend making a trip to a Dollar Store.

Other options for making the box even more special include wrapping it – with the lid wrapped separately – in festive paper, writing a personal note to be included in the box and donating $7 to help with shipping the box to a special child who needs to experience the joy of Christmas. That donation also allows the donor to follow their box online by visiting www.samaritanspurse.org/ezgive until it reaches a child in one of more than 100 possible locations.

Operation Christmas Child organizer for Hepzibah Baptist Church Daricer Shoemaker said the program is a great way to teach children in this country about how much they have to appreciate and how difficult it can be to live in different countries.

“We are so blessed in this country and we don’t stop to think about those things,” Shoemaker said. “This is a special time; a fun time for our church. I have been in charge of this for the last five or six years, and it is always so wonderful to see the children bring the boxes up to the altar to have them blessed before they are shipped.”

Last year the church was able to collect 1,800 boxes during the one week it collected for the program. This year, the church has asked for 140 large packing boxes from Operation Christmas Child in hopes of being able to collect at least 1,500 boxes. Each packing box can usually hold about 12 regular sized shoe boxes.

While there will be another collection agency in Talladega County to help out this year and Shoemaker admits the process can get hectic at times, she said the church welcomes the opportunity to help and feels blessed to have enough space to collect boxes.

“We have enough boxes that it is necessary for us to rent a U-Haul to take them to Mountain Brook where they will be loaded to be taken to Atlanta,” Shoemaker said. “It’s not until they get to Atlanta that the boxes are gone through and any items that might not survive the trip are removed. They are replaced with an age-appropriate gift for a boy or girl according to the labels on the boxes. Nothing is ever removed without being replaced with something comparable.”

At every stage, schoolchildren, teenagers and even adults are eager to volunteer their services in the process of organizing Operation Christmas Child boxes.

Shoemaker said students from Coosa Valley Elementary School and home schooled children who need service hours come to the church to help out in Talladega. Volunteers have also been put on waiting lists to work shifts at the Atlanta regional sorting and distribution center, ranging in age from teenagers to adults.

“Someone doesn’t have to be a certain denomination to participate in this program,” Shoemaker said. “Anybody is welcome to bring a shoebox during the week we are collecting them. Almost everyone is a part of this and it gets the church pumped up for the holidays. Our part comes out of church money, but it is well worth the ministry. And some of our Sunday school classes even get into a friendly competition each year.”

Once people get involved in bringing their boxes to the church, Shoemaker said the collection area can begin to look like a bit of a disaster area. Not only do boxes begin to pile up, but people have to fill out forms to include with the boxes and groups may be putting items into the boxes at the church.

For a program that mostly advertises in religious newspapers and magazines and relies heavily on word of mouth, Operation Christmas Child has managed to bring joy and the messages of Christianity to families all over the world.

“We hear so many stories from Samaritan’s Purse,” Shoemaker said. “The missionaries asked one girl what they should pray for and she said they should ask for snow because she had never seen it. She opened her box and she had a snow globe. Another boy had never had any shoes and was going to run away. He received his box and there were shoes in it that were just his size. You can see God’s hand in that. Once one girl got educated, she got into the ministry herself because she saw what it had done for her and that anyone could participate.”

With their shoeboxes, each child is also given “The Greatest Gift of All” booklets, illustrated books telling the story of Jesus in 49 local languages.

Missionaries also invite the children to attend Bible clubs; and if a location isn’t available for the club, sometimes the family will volunteer their home because they are so touched by the joy the missionaries have brought to their children through the gifts in the boxes. In some cases, entire families will convert to Christianity based on a shoebox filled with toys families in the United States might consider to be not very valuable.

“This is a church ministry directed toward children,” Shoemaker said. “The kids get to pick out what to put in the boxes with their parents and help another child have a little bit of Christmas.”

To get your Christmas shoebox delivered by Hepzibah Baptist Church, be sure to bring it Monday, Nov. 16, Tuesday, Nov. 17, Thursday, Nov. 19, or Friday, Nov. 20, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.; Wednesday, Nov. 18, between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 21, between 10 a.m. and noon; or Sunday, Nov. 22, between 2 and 5 p.m.

If you have any additional questions about how Operation Christmas Child works, call the Hepzibah Baptist Church office at 256-268-2200.