Operation Christmas Child

Operation Christmas Child

About this time every year I get uberly super excited about a program that I LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! Yes, I love it for obvious reasons, but this year my reasons for loving this program are VERY different. This year it’s personal!

This year I’m not calling this program Operation Christmas Child, this year I am 'nicknameing' this program Operation Christmas Hope. The reason you ask? Well like I said this year it has become very personal! These boxes go where children dream of Christmas but are caught in a world that’s filled with reality; there is no time or place to dream.

While I was in Guatemala and then in Uganda I had a few experiences that left the mommy in me torn into shreds. Now hear me out! I’m not new to the mission field. I started around the age of 12 and did my first “mission trip” four years ago. But I saw something that broke me, and I know nothing in me will ever be the same.

Have you ever seen a 5 year old little girl carrying her 2/3 year old baby brother on her back while hoeing a dry dusty field? Have you ever see that baby hours later crying for their sister, not their mommy, but their sister? Have you ever held the hand of a little boy and looked in his eye while he was being tested for HIV, the same disease that had stolen the life of every member of his family? Have you even see and child digging through garbage and actually eating what they find? Have you ever see and held 5year old little girl that wore a white ring she got off a milk jug as a bracelet with a men’s button up shirt with only a top button left to cover her little body?

I looked in to the eyes of these children and more, and I can tell you that these little red and green boxes mean a lot more then a Christmas gift to these children. They are a ticket to a place where imagination runs free. It opens a door to a long forgotten window filled with dreams, unleash world filled with make-believe and fantasy. They are reminding children that they are not forgotten.

As I told you before this year it personal, the list of the places that will receive the boxes that Canada as a whole will collect will be shipped to the following places: Central America & the Caribbean:
Costa Rica / El Salvador / Guatemala / Haiti / Nicaragua
South America:
Argentina / Bolivia / Chile / Paraguay / Uruguay / Venezueua
West Africa:
Cote d'Ivoire / Ecuatorial Guinea / Guinea Bissau / Senegal / Sierra Leone.