WINDSOR MILL, Md. — From now through Christmas, 1,300 volunteers will fill shoeboxes with school supplies, personal care items and toys each day at Samaritan’s Purse’s new Mid-Atlantic Ministry Center in Windsor Mill, and for Michele Murren of Adams County, Pennsylvania, it’s a labor of love.
“I work year-round at this project. I’m on a county team and we work together to gather and to pack shoeboxes,” said Murren, “My group last year, just the small group, we did 354 boxes this year. Our county team was over 10,000.”
That’s close to the number of shoeboxes Samaritan’s Purse initially sent to the children in war-torn Bosnia when the program started back in the early nineties.
On hand to dedicate the new center in Baltimore, President and CEO Franklin Graham says Operation Christmas Child now delivers more than 12 million of the boxes to 170 different countries and territories around the world.
“This was an old run-down building and we refurbished it and now, it’s a fantastic facility,” said Graham, “and this is going to allow us to touch children around the world.”
It probably flew under the radar, but Samaritan’s Purse has long been in Baltimore doing exactly what it’s doing today.
93,000 volunteers have helped over the last decade to send out more than eight million gifts from here and what an impact they can have.
Isabella McMillon recalls receiving one as a 13-year-old during the communist regime in Romania attending underground church services.
“In the corner of my shoebox was this beautiful silver and blue snow globe that for me---I had been praying for snow for three months asking God to help us have a fun winter, and there was my snow right there in my hand,” recalled McMillon.
The shoeboxes processed here are destined for children in Ukraine, Thailand, Liberia, Madagascar and South Africa, many of whom may be learning the true meaning of Christmas for the first time.
“Has Christmas ever meant more to you than before you got involved in this?” we asked Murren.
“Absolutely not,” she replied, “I mean Christmas always is important, but this just magnifies the lives that we’re reaching for Christ.”
