It looks like Santa has workshops popping up all over Elkins, as local businesses, churches and homes prepare to serve as collection points for Operation Christmas Child. Soon, with the help of Elkins volunteers, the sites will be brimming with festively wrapped shoe boxes full of gifts.
Through Operation Christmas Child, the world's largest Christmas project, Elkins residents are packing shoe box gifts for children in more than 100 countries suffering from natural disaster, war, terrorism, disease, famine and poverty. From Elkins, the shoe box gifts will be sorted and sent using whatever means necessary - sea containers, trucks, trains, airplanes, boats, camels, even dog sleds - to reach children in need around the world.
Operation Christmas Child uses tracking technology that allows donors to "follow your box" to the destination country where it will be hand-delivered to a child in need. To register shoe box gifts and find out what country they are delivered to, use the EZ Give donation form found at www.samaritanspurse.org.
Local collection sites are: Big Lots, 710 Beverly Pike, Elkins; Furniture Bowden, 33 S. Main St., Philippi; Special Ministries, P.O. Box 28, Bowden; Performance Motors, 224 Pennsylvania Ave., Parsons; Kidwell Auto First, Main St., Thomas; United Methodist Church, 52 S. Florida St., Buckhannon; and Mountaineer Insurance Services Inc, Route 219, Second Floor Valley Steel Building, Dailey.
In 2008, the Elkins area contributed more than 11,000 boxes to the Operation Christmas Child effort. This year, organizers hope to collect 12,450 gift-filled shoe boxes from families, churches, schools and civic organizations in the area.
Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child, a project of international Christian relief and evangelism organization Samaritan's Purse, headed by Franklin Graham, has delivered more than 68 million gift-filled shoe boxes to needy children in some 130 countries.
For more information, call 304-478-4184 or visit www.samaritanspurse.org.
National Collection Week is Nov. 16-23.
