Bible Union Gearing Up for Operation Christmas Child

Community members are invited to help celebrate 30 years of Samaritans Purse ministry packing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. This is an international relief organization with a mission to provide local partners around the world with shoeboxes filled with small toys, personal care, items, and school supplies.

Reaching out to children in their own communities Operation Christmas Child is a tangible way with children in need around the world to let them know they are loved, and not forgotten. Each shoebox is an opportunity to share the gospel with a child who may never receive a gift in their life.

Many of these children then enter into a 12-lesson discipleship program called “The Greatest Journey.” The Greatest Journey is a series of classes where children learn to follow Jesus and tell others about him. They receive a certificate and a colorfully-illustrated New Testament Bible in their own language at a graduation ceremony. This connects the children to local churches who can continue discipling and nature, or the children and their faith.

Local Christians are trained and equipped to share the good news of Jesus cross in a child, friendly way at outreach events where children receive a surprise, shoebox gift, along with the greatest gift booklet.

The greatest gift booklet is used in 97 languages much more translations and progress ministry partner share the gospel at over 70,000 community outreach events in 2022. Samaritan’s Purse is celebrating that more than 50 million children have been disciple through the Greatest Journey. Since 2009, more than 1.7 million teachers have been trained to lead more than 35 million boys and girls who have been in rolled in the program. There are a total of 24.9 million graduates with 17.4 million decisions for Christ. To find out more about this discipleship program. Go to HYPERLINK "http://samaritanspurse.org/tgj" \t "_blank" samaritanspurse.org/tgj.

Bible Union Baptist Church will be a drop-off center for Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes, Nov. 13-20. Hours will be Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Sunday from 12 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. and Monday from 7-9 a.m. Bible Union Baptist Church is located at 2852 Bible Union Rd., Martin.

For more information, call Jo Ann Wireman at 731-819-3490.