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Shoeboxes: Operation Christmas Child spreads joy

Last month, local residents of all ages filled more than 9,400 shoeboxes with gifts meant to share the message and spirit of Christmas with children in need, around the world. It is only slightly fewer boxes than were filled at this time last year.

Paula Keplinger, church relations coordinator for Operation Christmas Child, said boxes were filled in Wood, Calhoun, Doddridge, Gilmer, Jackson, Pleasants, Ritchie, Roane, Tyler and Wirt counties. There are likely plenty of people in those counties whose own Christmases will not resemble the sparkling, gift-filled spectaculars we see on TV, but they still pitched in to bring a little Christmas joy to someone else — someone they will probably never meet.

“Children are so important, wherever they are,” Keplinger said. “This is just like a golden opportunity for anybody to reach out anywhere in the world and touch a child.”

Keplinger, who is associate pastor with Tyler River of Life Church, is headed to Charlotte, N.C., this weekend to work again this year at one of the distribution centers for the project. Here at home, Fairlawn Baptist Church served as the collection point for all 9,400 boxes before Thanksgiving.

It took a lot of people to pull this effort together — from preschoolers stuffing boxes, to churches overseeing the loading of trucks — but it was all toward a common goal to do something important for kids across the globe.

“At the very least, a child in poverty is going to get some awesome gifts for Christmas,” Keplinger said.

There is still time to help by contributing online at samaritanspurse.org/occ; because, as Keplinger put it, “Children are so important, wherever they are.”

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