Multiple twisters with winds up to 150 miles per hour tore through Spalding County in mid-January, damaging more than 2,000 properties in the Griffin area. Just two days later, Samaritan’s Purse set up a base camp at Oak Hill Church in nearby Williamson. This past Friday (March 17), our U.S. disaster relief team completed more…
Volunteer Perseveres in Leadership Despite Challenges
After spending 24 years as a special agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kathy Aiken found a different calling. Today, Kathy serves as an area coordinator for the Operation Christmas Child East Alabama Area Team. Based out of Talladega County, Kathy leads a team of volunteers that promote shoebox packing year-round. “I feel like…
Homeowner Receives Christ as Volunteers Clean Up After Flooding
Samaritan’s Purse volunteer teams are at work in La Plata and Archuleta counties in Colorado after the remnants of two tropical systems brought torrential rainfall on Oct. 11. As levees broke upstream, water rushed down the mountains, carving channels through streets and neighborhoods. Hundreds of homes were affected. Dianne Paxton was forced to evacuate as…
Volunteers Hard at Work in Two Mississippi Locations
Dozens of Samaritan’s Purse volunteers are assisting homeowners in Rolling Fork and in Amory, Mississippi, where a long band of powerful thunderstorms, spawning multiple tornadoes, carved a 100-mile path of destruction across the Magnolia State March 24, damaging and destroying hundreds of homes and knocking out power across Mississippi. VOLUNTEER IN MISSISSIPPI ROLLING FORK |…
Delivering Christmas to Children in Uganda
In late 2002, Franklin Graham gathered with musician Bono (of U2) and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Youth Choir at New York’s JFK International Airport for a special send-off. More than 80,000 Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts were loaded onto an Antonov 225, the world’s largest cargo jet at the time, to be transported to Ugandan children…
Embracing Joy Again Together
Marine Sergeant Austin Dickinson and his wife, Cass, an Air Force Senior Airman, stood just out of reach of the thundering waterfall where they had hiked—from the boat to the remote pebbled shore of Alaska’s Lake Clark and up the trail lined with devil’s club to the cove where the water gushed from a high…
Newsletter August
Volunteer at a Drop-off Location (es)
Discipling Boys and Girls through The Greatest Journey
After 16 years of collecting and delivering Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts, Samaritan’s Purse launched its own follow-up discipleship program for the boys and girls who receive them. In 2009, this 12-lesson course called The Greatest Journey started at Good Shepherd Church in Pifo, Ecuador, located just outside of Quito, and today has grown to…
Veteran Couple Finds Forgiveness, Freedom in Christ While in Alaska
Army Corporal Hamilton Kinard’s 15-month deployment to Iraq was a turning point in his military career. At age 19, he had joined the military “to make my dad happy. I hadn’t done much with my life up to that point and I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help somebody.” In 2005, as…











