Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
Long Branch Baptist Church in Williston packed 266 Operation Christmas Child boxes during their packing party on Nov. 20 after regular Sunday services.
Calvary Baptist Church of Barnwell Pastor Dean L. Deer and wife, JoAnne Deer, with their granddaughter, Corrie Brynn Deichman, dropping off cartons full of shoeboxes at the central drop off location in Aiken.
Brenda Trull and Scarlett pack shoeboxes at Long Branch Baptist Church to send to children overseas.
Levi Givens, Harper Joye, and Mary Quinn Joye lent a hand during National Collection Week.
Calvary Baptist Church in Barnwell has served as a collection site for Operation Christmas Child since 2018, and this holiday season is no different.
This year, 2,179 shoeboxes were collected from 34 individuals and churches in Barnwell County and surrounding areas to be sent internationally to those in need of holiday cheer.
Operation Christmas Child is a ministry through Samaritan’s Purse, a non-denominational evangelical Christian organization providing aid to those in need since 1970. The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to “demonstrate God’s love in a tangible way to children in need around the world,” according to their website.
Shoeboxes are decorated and packed with holiday gifts for children in war-torn or un-industrialized areas to then be distributed on an international scale. Each shoebox also contains a message of the gospel.
This is a nationwide initiative, and Calvary Baptist Church is only one of the many locations serving as the drop-off locations.
“The project delivers not only the joy of what, for many kids, is their first gift ever, but also gives them a tangible expression of God’s love,” states the Samaritan’s Purse website.
Casey Deichman serves as the drop-off leader at Calvary Baptist Church, where she is currently a member. From November 14 to November 21 of each year since the church has become a collection site, Deichman organizes the thousands of shoe boxes carefully crafted from the community.
This week in November serves as the National Collections Week for sites globally, thus uniting acts of service across the world.
From the homes of caring individuals to the dedicated team at Calvary Baptist Church, the packages are then brought to a drop off location in Aiken, and then to a processing center in Charlotte, N.C. to be prepared for international shipping.
This year, Calvary Baptist Church hauled 145 cartons full of shoeboxes to the central drop off location in Aiken.
Deichman views Operation Christmas Child as “a way to make an eternal difference in somebody's life.”
Calvary Baptist Church in Barnwell has a unique namesake to Operation Christmas Child and Samaritan’s Purse, making the church the ideal hub for community donations in Barnwell County.
The Samaritan’s Purse website explains in the summer of 1993, the organization’s president, Franklin Graham, was asked to fill shoeboxes with gifts for children in war stricken Bosnia.
Graham asked his friend, the late Pastor Ross Rhoads of Calvary Church of Charlotte to participate in collecting gifts. Within weeks, the church prepared 11,000 boxes to be sent to these children, stated the website.
Although Deichman was unable to participate fully as drop-off leader this year due to her daughter being in the hospital, she felt “the church members in the community stepped up to make National Collection Week happen.”
