Samaritanr’s Purse is a Christian

Samaritanr's Purse is a Christian based international relief organization that uses an evangelical platform to provide relief to people in need. Offering medical care, food, physical labor or logistical support, the faith-based organization provides humanitarian aid to afflicted regions around the globe. One of the many ongoing ministries of Samaritans Purse is Operation Christmas Child.

Operation Christmas Child was created in 1990 by Dave Cooke and his wife Gill for children in Romania. The story goes, in October of 1990 Cooke was having a meal with a good friend John Roberts when the news broke of deuterating orphanages and the images of the children were appearing on television. Dave suggested they take a truck to Romania with aid for the orphans there. [1] He and his brother Paul rounded up some friends there to help. Operation Christmas Child hit the headlines and snowballed in a matter of months. [2] In December 1990, a convoy of 9 trucks departed Wexham heading for Romania with almost $700,000 of aid.

From 1990 to 1995 Operation Christmas Child grew exponentially, delivering shoeboxes to Belarus, Bosnia and Romania. In 1995 negotiations started with the American International charity Samaritan's Purse who had the means of taking Operation Christmas Child global [3] and the charities were merged. As of April 2015, over 124 million boxes have been delivered globally.

Operation Christmas Child is the world's largest Christmas project of its kind, directed to children between the ages 2-14, it uses gift-filled shoeboxes, to demonstrate God's love in a tangible way to children in need around the world. Every year in November, thousands of churches, schools, groups and individual donors prepare and collect shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies, personal items, and other small gifts. A booklet of bible stories is often distributed alongside the shoebox gifts which are given to children based on need alone, regardless of their faith. These boxes are then distributed overseas by volunteers. [4] Participants can follow their box online to discover where in the world their gift is delivered from the website samaritanspurse.org/occ.

The internet is full of positive and negative forums and comments on Sarmatians Purse and its ministry Operation Christmas Child. The bottom line is, no matter where we go or what we do, this program offers more than help, it offers hope to suffering people in a broken world. If offering small gifts as a token to present Christianity and its teachings, through stories about Jesus Christ, in places where religion may take on a skewed form and it changes just one childr's outlook on life of well-being than then it is mission accomplished.

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