This year, a team from Journey was able to travel to Charlotte to help sort through thousands of Operation Christmas Child boxes. Our second year in a row, it's quickly becoming a tradition of the season and more people are getting involved and becoming aware of the ministry of Samaritan's Purse. Getting a shift to work is no small task and my mom dedicated her time and energy while out of the state back in August just to secure a spot for our team. Even after calling first thing on the date the phones were open, and spending eight (yes, eight!) hours playing phone tag, our team landed on the waiting list. That's how popular this event is! People come from all over the United States to participate at the processing center in Charlotte. The people at the table next to ours were from Ohio, and every year, they are able to secure a week long spot, working all day.
The only thing they do for fun is tour the Billy Graham Library. Ha!
As you can see, we got the call to come and work a shift just like last year. This time, we had about 19 people on the team. Jobs varied among the group from the "treasure hunter" (that was my job) who was responsible for pulling out any monetary donations from the box, to inspectors, tapers, scanners, packers and heavy lifters. For five hours we worked through thousands of boxes, too many passing through our hands to really keep a count. When we finished with our shift, we were told that another 500 volunteers were scheduled to come through the doors that night! As we were leaving, I noticed on the white board where they do keep a count of the number of shoe boxes processed, that it was up around 450,000. And that was the total since the processing center had been open this year, and it only stays open for about three weeks to process all the gifts!
I do hope to return again next year... and hoping Matt can go too and experience how neat it is to be a part of this phase of this ministry.
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