Editor’s Note: This Student Union column was written by a John Bapst Memorial High School student. Her adviser is Lynn Manion.

How many gifts will you give to needy children this Christmas? Churches, schools, and service organizations from central and northern Maine collected 5,239 shoe boxes filled with gifts for children overseas.

These shoe boxes will join millions of others in Boone, N.C., where they will be shipped to 100 countries, including poor areas in the United States, in a nationwide effort called Operation Christmas Child.

Operation Christmas Child is an outreach project of the Samaritan’s Purse Organization that sends 5 million shoe boxes filled with gifts to children all over the world. The goal of this project is to bring hope to children in desperate situations.

This year, 194,000 shoe boxes were collected throughout New England and New York. For the first time, 300,000 shoe boxes will be sent to children in India, as well as thousands of gifts to HIV-positive children in Africa.

Locally, Judy Lunt and Jan Aston were coordinators at the Operation Christmas Child official collection center for northern and central Maine. Relay centers in Houlton, Machias, Charleston and Winterport sent cartons of shoe boxes to the center at the First Methodist Church in Brewer.

Being involved with Operation Christmas Child was an incredible experience for Lunt. “What was great was so many churches of all denominations helped us,” Lunt said. Volunteers from area churches and a youth group from Peru, Maine, loaded the 5,239 boxes into 332 cartons that filled a tractor-trailer truck donated by Roadway Express.

Lunt has many fond memories of the experience. “One family with six children went shopping together, and all the kids, except the baby, picked out what they wanted to put in their shoe box to send,” she said.

“When they got home, the 3-year-old boy thought that the gifts were for him. The parents told him it was going to another little boy for Christmas, and as the child was packing the box, his parents saw him praying for the child who would receive it.”

Marion Bailey, a member of the East Orrington Congregational Church, organized her church’s first year of participation in Operation Christmas Child and collected 88 shoe boxes. Bailey has already started planning for next year. “I would like to get the Sunday school involved next year,” she said.

“At the First Methodist Church, they had the little kids bring down the boxes and put them on the altar. I would like to do that and maybe have the kids bring in something every month for a kid overseas to extend Operation Christmas Child through the year,” Bailey explained. “I also hope that more people decide to participate next year.”

Dennis Harvey, a second-year Operation Christmas Child organizer at Calvary Chapel in Orrington, said, “For me, it was a wonderful way to start the holiday season.”

The church collected 129 shoe boxes in its fourth year of participation. “When you see the video tapes or read the literature, you realize how well off you have it as an American,” Harvey commented.

The First Baptist Church in Bangor has participated in the project for three years under the direction of Kim Douglas. Being involved from the start, Douglas is continually impressed by the generosity of the church. This year, numbers were at their highest; Douglas collected 60 shoe boxes.

Students at John Bapst Memorial High School also got involved with this project through the school’s chapter of the National Honor Society; Bapst students raised more than $300 to fill 20 shoe boxes.

For NHS student president Katie Rice, the experience was truly rewarding. “When we were shopping for the kids, it was as if we knew them because we made a connection to them through the project,” she said.