Mary Altura and her little brother Gabriel traveled from Eleele to Lihue Monday evening with a special delivery: Two shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.
This was their first year contributing to the program that sends gifts to children overseas.
“I just wanted to give to kids who don’t have much and to share my blessings,” Mary Altura said shortly after arriving at Breath of Life church.
Gabriel nodded in agreement. Did he like donating presents for other keiki in a part of the world far away?
“Yeah,” he said.
It was a record year of giving for the Christian program through Samaritan’s Purse.
When the final boxes were counted with the last deliveries about 7 p.m., wrapping up National Collection Week, it came to 3,432, which beat last year’s record of 3,163.
It was only six years ago OCC on Kauai collected about 700 boxes.
Area coordinators Mike and Christina Ensman said more churches, about 20, were involved, and they saw many new faces arriving with one, two or an SUV filled with the red and green shoeboxes. Inside were hygiene products, school supplies, clothes, stuffed animals and all sorts of small toys for boys and girls.
Happy volunteers greeted them, offering hugs, smiles, candy and prayers.
“It makes me want to cry and smile at the same time,” said Christina Ensman, who headed to the OCC processing center in California this week. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
Mike Ensman said he wasn’t surprised at the generosity of donors, volunteers and Matson, which gave them a great deal on shipping. Most people pitch in the $9 to shop each box, as well.
The stories behind the shoeboxes are heartwarming. Children save year-round to fill one. Families with little make sacrifices to help keiki they don’t even know. Kupuna use their limited budget to contribute.
Mike Ensman noted that Samaritans Purse sent a disaster relief team to Kauai following the April flooding, so many people came to know more about the organization.
Now, they wanted to return the favor.
“The community steps up every year,” he said. “The word is getting out.”
Since 1993, OCC has collected and delivered about 150 million shoebox gifts to children in more than 160 countries and territories. The Philippines, Peru and Indonesia are just some of the places where children who live in poverty will open gifts, some for the first time in their lives.
Volunteer Greg Honnold Jr. recounted the story of a boy who lived in a desert country, and when he opened his OCC shoebox, inside was a pair of snow gloves.
The boy was crying when a coordinator walked to him and said he could open another box.
“No, you don’t understand,” the boy said. “I work with hot bread all day. I burn my hands all the time. I prayed for gloves.”
“God knows where each box needs to be,” Honnold said.
He said this year’s OCC drive seemed special. He saw people working together closer than years past, having more fun, laughing, and as a result, the operation went smoothly.
Honnold enjoyed watching cars drive up, and kupuna and keiki get out and walk up with shoeboxes.
“To see these kids bringing in boxes, that warms my heart,” he said. “Here in the U.S., we’re spoiled. We have everything. For a child who has nothing, this is a godsend.”
Sissie Aqui of Ohana Christian Fellowship arrived with an SUV jammed with 75 shoeboxes. She said the church loves to pitch in, “just to be able to reach children who don’t have what we get to have.”
“We can complain all we want, we can complain all we want about what we don’t have. But there are people who have less,” she said.
Ohana Christian Fellowship’s congregation takes time to select just the right gifts for each box. Those boxes are filled not only with toys, hygiene items and pens or paper, but love, Aqui said.
When children in a faraway place open them, she said they will laugh and smile with delight, and “they get to know that somewhere in the world, people love them.”
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Bill Buley, editor-in-chief, can be reached at 245-0457 or bbuley@thegardenisland.com.
