MAHONING TOWNSHIP - 'Tis the season for giving, and the Salem Bible Fellowship Church near Lehighton is currently serving as a drop off site for Operation Christmas Child for Samaritan's Purse.
This is what the movement is all about: folks pack up shoe boxes with various items. Those boxes then get sent to children all around the world, including some third-world countries. The boxes sent to the kids might be the first present that they've ever received.
"It's humbling," Theresa Johnson, the project manager at the church, said. "It is neat to be able to give to someone and know that that might make their whole day, their whole year maybe."
"The shoe box is a gift to them, showing that there are individuals in the world that aren't evil, that aren't nasty, that do love them, even though they've never met them," Robert Johnson, the pastor at the church said. "A number of members from our church have received replies in letter form from some of the children thanking us for sending the shoe boxes."
The drop off period lasts until November 20. Members of the church have already filled over 300 shoe boxes. The plan is that by next week, there will be over 1,000 boxes filled and ready to go.
"I was in the service, so there's always a competitive nature there," Robert Johnson said. "We'd like to see a good 1,000 go from this area, to East Stroudsburg, then from there to Baltimore and from the processing there, they go directly to the children."