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Impossible!
Unbelievable!
The math can’t work.
But it does.
John Bouk distributed only 3,000 boxes for Rowan County kids to fill for Operation Christmas Child this year, but he’s delivered 5,200 boxes to Samaritan’s Purse in Charlotte.
“We’ve already taken two loads,” he exults, “and we still have boxes coming in. We’ll probably have 5,500 this year.”
Is that possible?
Don’t doubt it, says Bouk.
Director of Christian outreach at the South Rowan YMCA, Bouk has coordinated Operation Christmas Child in this area since it began here four years ago. The international relief organization headed by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, uses shoeboxes packed with small toys, necessity items, school supplies, hard candy, personal photos and a handwritten note to brighten the lives of millions of underprivileged children in 91 countries. Last year it delivered gifts to more than 3 million children.
But the supplier of the shoeboxes is supplying fewer each year.
So Samaritan’s Purse wants people to buy plastic shoeboxes, which are available at Wal-Mart and other stores, when they can. The plastic boxes, Bouk says, are a gift within themselves.
“The children can use them to store things in,” Bouk says. “Some churches went exclusively to plastic boxes this year.”
But they were still surprised, he says, “that we had so many come back when we had so few to give out. We had a big response.”
He doesn’t think the shoeboxes distributed in the past will be available in the future. They’ve been cutting back each year, but that didn’t slow anybody down this year.
“One church picked up 200 or 300 and delivered their own. The response from this area is amazing. They say the quickest-growing area they have is Rowan” — especially with the opening of a new center in Kannapolis this year. That didn’t affect the collection in Rowan at all, Bouk says. It still is the highest yet.
“I thought that would make a difference,” Bouk says, “but the whole area is responding if you have two centers pumping out that many boxes.”
“And we loaded the truck the quickest we’ve ever loaded a truck in all the years,” Bouk says. Tommi Burgess, who works in the office at the South Y, enlisted her son, Noah, who was there at the time, and all his friends.
“And, boy! They did it! The whole lobby emptied out in about 20 minutes. The boxes went flying out that door.”
Bouk made two runs to Charlotte with a truck (and personal labor)supplied by Tim Sloop of Patterson Tomato Farm.
But no more pickups will be made at Catawba College or any of the other YMCAs this year. Anyone with boxes to send may take them to the South Rowan Y at 950 Kimball Road in China Grove before Wednesday, and they will be delivered. Anyone with questions should call Bouk at 857-7011.
And now the children who filled boxes and wrote notes can start hoping for a letter.
Some always get answers to the notes they include — and occasionally more than one.
“Paulette Jackson of Grace Lutheran Church got a letter back two or three years ago,” Bouk says, “and now the little girl has access to a computer and writes to her all the time. They’ve become regular pen pals.”
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