HANOVER – Last week two transport trucks arrived at the Hanover Missionary Church, which served this year as one of the Operation Christmas Child central drop-off locations for donors in north Wellington, Huron, Perth, Dufferin, Bruce and Grey Counties.
A team loaded 3,189 shoebox gifts onto the trucks destined for Mississauga, where they were loaded on a train, to be transported to Calgary for processing.
“Many people in the area miss volunteering at a processing centre here in Ontario,” officials say in a press release. “Perhaps in the future, a rotating center will return to the province.”
Port Elgin Shoreline Baptist Drop Off Center also brought 702 shoeboxes collected in their area, and Rockcliff Church Drop Off Center in Owen Sound brought 1,030 shoebox gifts to be loaded for the journey.
As a result, the grand total for this area was 4,921 gifts for needy children who are suffering poverty, neglect, illness and hardships “which we in Canada cannot imagine,” organizers state.
This season shoeboxes from Canada will be sent to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica in Central America.
COVID-19 restrictions prevented the distribution of shoeboxes for some time, but many countries have resumed shoebox events.
Canadian boxes will also be sent to West Africa: to Senegal, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia. If partnerships can resume in Northern Canada some of the gifts may make their way northward.
Occasionally communication from children who have been presented with shoeboxes is received locally.
Linda Lantz from St Peter’s Lutheran Church in Neustadt, recently opened four emails, three in Spanish, from children in Central America, and one from The Gambia in West Africa. The messages were from children who had received her gifts packed last year.
“The last letter was from a lady in West Africa who is a mother to six children,” Lantz said. “The items in her daughter’s box were exactly her size.
“It is gratifying to realize that our local gifts made it safely to their destination.”
The local team expressed gratitude to people who have donated financially and who gave extra items to be packed, “as well as for the many hardworking volunteers who served to help brighten the lives of boys and girls who will be so overjoyed to receive a gift from Canada.”
