As back-to-school items are placed front-and-center in stores this time of year, many Operation Christmas Child year-round shoppers are rolling up their sleeves to find great deals. School supplies are a fundamental component of quality shoebox gifts. In addition to capitalizing on seasonal sales and off-season clearance merchandise, shopping year-round divides shoebox purchases over several…
Operation Christmas Child Brings Hope to Fire-Ravaged Community
Notebooks and pencils were some of the items that immediately caught Fernanda’s attention when she peered inside of her shoebox gift. She’d be going back to school in a few months and had no supplies to take with her—everything she owned had burned during a fire a few weeks earlier. The inferno had attacked the…
Newsletter January
OCC Schools 2025
Franklin Graham Thanks Processing Center Volunteers
Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham today thanked the thousands of volunteers who are currently working in eight processing center locations across the U.S. to prepare millions of Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts for international shipment. Headed to over 100 countries this year, the gift-filled shoeboxes will bring great joy and the Good News of Jesus…
Mission and History
She’s Got a Passion for Sharing Christ Through Shoeboxes
The first thing you notice about 24-year-old Amanda Urgolites is her smile—bright, warm, welcoming, continual. That’s not so unusual, you might say. But Amanda’s radiant smile is all the more remarkable because she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a rare and incurable collagen deficiency disorder that causes her ligaments to stretch and malfunction. Her bones dislocate…
Making Disciples in the Philippines
The boys and girls knew to quickly pick up their chairs and scoot to the side, clearing the narrow alleyway anytime a bicycle or motorbike needed to squeeze through. These interruptions to the discipleship class happened often enough that they had become normal, and the children and their teachers carried on with worship and Bible…
‘The Lord Loves Even His Enemies’
In a small town on the plains of Central Asia, most people are hostile to the small group of Christians living among them. Though these courageous believers are continually harassed, they faithfully persevere. Two Christian women named Aigul* and Dinara* were meeting regularly to pray for their town. Persecution flared up when Aigul’s mother died.…










