For many years, families from Custer County have packed shoebox gifts for boys and girls around the world as a part of Operation Christmas Child, an international Christian project from the Samaritan’s Purse organization. One of those gifts reached Lorena Surducan in Romania when she was a young girl. She visited Nebraska recently to share how the simple gift made a life-changing impact.
“I was born in a post-communist country and because of that, my country, we struggled financially as a nation. It took us good years to recover both financially and as a people, to learn to get up and use our strengths and try to match the economy or the power of the countries around us. So because of that during those periods of time we started to receive a lot of help from other foreign countries” Surducan said in an interview on her way to speak in Sidney, NE.
Surducan said that one Christmas Eve, she and other children in her church went to their Sunday school classroom to find an assortment of brightly colored boxes of various shapes and sizes waiting for them.
“Then the pastor asked us to pray and thank God for the boxes but also to bless the hands that put those boxes together. The room was just filled with laughter and screams and joy and colorful gift wrap was just flying all around,” Surducan reflected.
Operation Christmas Child uses the simple shoebox gift as a way to share the love of Jesus Christ. Since 1993, over 232 million shoebox gifts have been collected for children in over 170 countries and territories.
Surducan said all of the children were excited to discover items that they had no exposure to in Romania like colorful school supplies, notebooks with glitter, and various toys.
One item in Lorena’s box was extra special: a Barbie doll. She and her sister had seen Barbie dolls in a foreign toy catalog that they received in a care package from another country. Surducan said she prayed continually for a Barbie doll since that day until that special Sunday at church.
“When I looked at the bottom of the box, I saw a doll with blonde hair and I was so happy when I realized that it was a Barbie doll”.
Operation Christmas Child’s National Collection Week is still several months away, November 17 to 24, but those who want to pack a box during that time can gather gifts for their box throughout the spring and summer. A list of gift ideas can be found on the Samaritan’s Purse website. Building a shoebox online is another option for those who want to donate but might not have the ability to shop item-by-item themselves.
Lorena started filling shoeboxes herself a few years ago and said she packs each box as if she was doing it for younger self.
“I always wonder what I would have liked, what would have been something that would have amazed me or something that I would have wanted. So usually these shoeboxes are all filled with colorful, glittery, and fluffy items. Things that I know my old self would have loved to receive,” said Surducan.
Operation Christmas Child hopes to collect enough shoebox gifts to reach another 12.6 million children this year. Local locations will be a part of an expected 4,700 drop-off locations across the nation in November.
You can listen to our full conversation with Lorena here:
