Operation Christmas Child [AUDIO]

Operation Christmas Child is a worldwide children's project of Samaritan's Purse that uses simple gift-filled shoe boxes to let underprivileged children know that they are loved and not forgotten. This year, Missoula residents exceeded their goal to send 3,900 shoe box gifts to needy children overseas by packing 4,148 gifts. Spokeswomen Jennifer Butler says the collection period ended in Missoula but, for the second year in a row, you can build a box online.(That interview is attached below)

To build a box visit here.

Operation Christmas Child began in the United States in 1993 with 28,000 shoe box gifts. Since then, this Samaritan's Purse project has collected and hand-delivered more than 86 million shoe box gifts to needy children in more than 130 countries, including:

• Young earthquake and cholera victims in Haiti (2010)
• Kids in China who were vivtims of the 2008 earthquake (2008 & 2009)
• Young children in the war-torn Republic of Georgia (2008)
• Hurting children stricken by poverty in war-ravaged Sudan (2007)
• Children in Iraq, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries (2006)
• Young survivors of the horrific tsunami in Southeast Asia (2005)
• School children attacked by terrorists in Beslan, Russia (2004)
• Ugandan children devastated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic (2002)
• Children in Honduras and Nicaragua left homeless by Hurricane Mitch (1998)
• War orphans in Kosovo (1999), Bosnia and Croatia (1995-1996), and Rwanda (1994