If you want to share some of God’s love, if you want to celebrate His glorious imagination with a child, tuck some color into an Operation Christmas Child shoebox this year.

Tania, then 10, was living in Romania when she received her first OCC gifts. “When I opened my shoebox, I saw an explosion of color—plastic jewelry, a new hat, and scarves. My favorite items were school supplies. I received colorful pens, a notebook, and colored pencils,” she said in testimony shared on the OCC website.

“As a child, I really loved going to school. I loved reading and writing. But school supplies were not readily available at that time. We only received a few pencils and they needed to last a long time. So, anything extra, or anything colorful, really meant a lot to me.”

Olesia, then 5, had a similar experience when she opened her gifts at her home in Moldova. “I dumped my whole box on the floor so Icould see everything at once ... The thing that stood out to me the most was a pack of colorful markers. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. There were so many in the pack! I didn’t know some of the colors existed. I was so excited, I jumped up and started running around the room. I always wished I could color and draw—the markers were exactly what I wanted.”

Through the swirl of color, both Tania and Olesia began to see a portrait of Jesus.

“We were told that the shoeboxes were packed by other Christians,” Tania said. “I learned that there are people who love Jesus Christenough to give special gifts to children they haven’t even met. I felt valued and loved, and this helped me to have a deeper walk with the Lord.”

Olesia felt His embrace. “God used my shoebox to reassure me that He really loved me. It showed me that God does answer prayer.God became real and personal to me.”

Sewickley United Methodist Church is launching its 11th OCC campaign, and together we have packed and shipped 1,001 shoe boxes. They have been distributed to children in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.

The months of July, August, and September will be the most important to our 2021 Sewickley UMC Operation Christmas Child campaign. Through September, we will be collecting the following gift items:

• Health and personal care items such as toothbrushes, adhesive bandages, combs, hair brushes, hair accessories, socks and sunglasses

• School supplies such as rulers with metric measurements, markers, pens and colored pencils, pencil sharpeners and erasers, scissors and glue sticks

• “Wow” toys, including dolls, balls, stuffed animals, ball caps and jewelry The Fellowship of the Cross has a donation box outside the church office.

Operation Christmas Child does not accept toothpaste, any liquids (including shampoo), candy, or war-related items such as toy guns or knives. There is an Operation Christmas Child option on the EasyTithe menu available through the church website. Financial contributions can also be made through the offering or church office; please mark them “OCC.”

With every shoebox, children are invited into VBS-like programs that give them an opportunity to know the love of Jesus. They receive Bibles as they complete the program.

“The day I received my shoebox, I went from knowing about Jesus to actually knowing Him,” Olesia said in her testimony on the OCC website. “I began a personal relationship with Jesus—one where He is my Best Friend—instead of just a powerful Man I’d heard about during Sunday School.”