Vicki Stamps is the Media Coordinator of St. Louis and the ten counties of Eastern Missouri for Samaritan Purse’s Operation Christmas Child, shoeboxes of gifts to needy children worldwide.
Vicki rejoices – and we rejoice with her — in the results of shoeboxes assembled and collected – mostly from churches with a few from others — in her region:
· The previous year (2012): 41, 642 shoeboxes were collected;
· The current year’s (2013) goal: 46,000;
· The current year’s (2013) number of shoeboxes received: 50,701 – 9,000 more than the previous year!
Learn more … and how we can be a part … by clicking on www.samaritanspurse.org, then “Operation Christmas Child.”
In 2013, I visited an Eastern Missouri OCC leaders gathering. It met, as they typically do, in a participating church, in this case the First Baptist Church of Ferguson (in Greater St. Louis), MO.
The group of nearly 100 saw a video of OCC area leader Janet Howard’s visit a Zambian orphanage and helping to distribute the shoeboxes – and the ecstatic joy of the children receiving them! As these assembled St. Louis area volunteers reveled in the video of the children and their joy, and as they made their local OCC plans for gathering as many shoebox gifts for the children in 2013, children they would never personally see in this life — I never remember having seen more joy and happiness in one group or one room … in my life!
One amazing and motivational “shoebox” story is that of Rwandan War survivor “Alex of Rwanda.” It can be seen by clicking on www.samaritanspurse.org/alex; or heard as Alex tells it on radio, headlined “Alex of Rwanda saw family murdered; in orphanage given OCC shoebox, received Jesus, forgave killer” Click on http://haroldhendrick.com/content/view/469/5/ , then scroll down.
In this radio conversation with Vicki Stamps, she notes the following wonderful reality: from OCC’s beginning in 1993 and through 2012, 100,000,000 (one hundred million!) shoeboxes of gifts of love have been assembled and distributed worldwide … mostly by followers of Jesus!
She “prophesies” that it will not take another 20 years to assemble the next 100,000,000 million.
Hear Vicki Stamps … in her own words …
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