Doris Row started packing Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes on her ranch in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, in 1995 after her 13-year-old son died at Christmastime the year before. She was determined not to live in grief, but to do something good to help overcome it. She chose to begin packing shoebox gifts for children in need around…
Operation Christmas Child
Great Joy in Mexico’s Jungles
Las Tres Huastecas region, along the Gulf Coast in Mexico, is hard to reach and isolated from much of the country. Many residents still speak the native language, Nahuatl, and worship indigenous idols. The few churches that preach the Gospel here are met with disdain and uncertainty. Earlier this year, however, at a small school…
Operation Christmas Child
Local Christians Use Shoebox Gifts to Help Plant Churches in Remote Mongolia
Highways leading out of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital city, continue east for many miles as far as the city of Chinggis. From there, the roads diminish to mere gravel paths that stretch across the vast pasturelands of Khenti Province. It’s from Chinggis, where transportation begins to get more difficult, that six churches are praying—paving the way—for…
Operation Christmas Child
Elena’s Story: Offering Praise in Poland
“The war started suddenly,” Elena, a fine arts teacher in Ukraine, said. “I prayed every day, ‘Lord, I trust in You. Give me strength, patience, and humility for this day.’” Soon, she and her daughter fled to Poland to escape the increasing violence. They arrived close to Easter and moved into a hotel that was…
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Pushing Themselves to the Limit—For a Good Cause
Matt and Jessica Cook stood satisfied at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro staring out at a carpet of clouds hovering nearly two miles below them. The father-daughter duo from Cuba, Missouri, had reached Africa’s highest peak—19,341 feet above sea level—after an almost weeklong test of strength and endurance. With a love for Samaritan’s Purse and…
Alaska Pilots Are a Lifeline in the Wilderness
A deafening buzz nearly every summer morning fills the air, echoing through the trees and mountains surrounding Port Alsworth, Alaska. There’s a good chance that one or two Samaritan’s Purse planes and pilots are responsible for breaking the wilderness silence. “As a young kid I grew up next to an Air Force base, and I…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Celebrating True Freedom in Christ
We are grateful this Fourth of July for the many freedoms we enjoy in the United States of America. We praise God for the even greater freedom—true, lasting, eternal—that many military couples have experienced at Samaritan Lodge Alaska this summer through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Dozens of wounded military veterans and their spouses…
Discipleship, Education & Training
Military Couples Strengthened by God in Faith and Marriage
Corporal Derrick Sharpe said he joined the U.S. Marine Corps because he wanted to “be the best of the best, be the first to fight.” “I don’t have a very good, happy kumbaya story. I grew up really poor and all I knew how to do was fight and take a beating, so I joined…
Hope for Wounded Lives and Marriages
As his unit rolled out on regular patrol that day, Army Specialist Marco Fernandez took his position in the mounted gun of a Stryker armored vehicle. They were transporting an officer to another base and then checking out Iraqi villages to look for potential threats. As Marco’s convoy sped past a town on that sunny…
