Sandy Simester (left) and Colleen Merrill
Dick Kroese
Operation Christmas Child first started in 1990 in North Wales when Dave Cooke, father of four, sees the horror of abandoned children in Romanian orphanages on TV news. He asks friends to help fill a truck with toys and drive them to Romania and this was the beginning of Operation Christmas Child as a charity.
In 1994 he built and opened an orphanage in Romania and, in that same year, 250,000 shoeboxes filled with toys were sent to Bosnia, Serbia, Kenya, Rwanda, Russia, Romania, Hungary and Albania. Also in that same year, Operation Christmas Child merged with Samaritan’s Purse. In 1995, 280,000 boxes of toys were delivered around the world. Then, in 2012, Operation Christmas Child reached an amazing milestone of delivering over 100 million gift-filled shoeboxes in 23 countries.
Community Church of SaddleBrooke (CCSB) has seen this need for some years and has been doing its part to give children a Christmas box filled with toys for children of all ages. This year our congregation filled 250 boxes full of toys for children of all ages and have made a difference in children’s lives around the world.
CCSB meets every Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. in the SaddleBrooke DesertView Theater. We are an all-denominational Christian Church and all are welcome.