| King's Church Rawnsley Centre, Keswick is a New Frontiers International church of 170 people. When two of its members, David and Doreen Metcalf, took early retirement nine years ago, they prayed about what they should do next. “Then out of the blue, a friend suggested we should run an OCC warehouse in the Keswick area. We never would have thought of such a thing but immediately we felt this was God's will for us,” says Doreen. The church was right behind them.
About 12 years ago, a close friend of Brian and Elizabeth Hodges, who are the leaders of Lugwardine Christian Fellowship in Herefordshire, went to work as a volunteer in an orphanage in Portugal. That Christmas the orphanage received shoe boxes from Samaritan's Purse and he was astonished at the difference the shoe boxes made in the children's lives. Back in England, he told the Lugwardine Christian Fellowship about it and that autumn, members of the 60 member Fellowship began making shoe boxes. Soon their chapel was too small for the shoe boxes collected and they moved to a warehouse.
When the Rev. Viv Parkinson and his wife Maz arrived in the parish of St Michael and St David, Llantrisant about seven years ago, the church was already sending several hundred shoe boxes to OCC. In a meeting about OCC, Maz felt strongly that God was calling her to get involved. Within months Maz had become Area Co-ordinator for the South Wales area. Her first warehouse collected 18,500 shoe boxes. Last year, it processed nearly 58,000 shoe boxes.
The local ecumenical partnership of St Paul Stockton and Newtown Methodist, Stockton-on-Tees was first introduced to OCC via a simple leaflet. A church member, Julie Collins, simply showed the leaflet to other members of the church and people responded. “That first year, I collected about 25 shoe boxes and we have been growing every year since then,” she says. Last year, the church became a local OCC checkpoint for the first time and checked over 1000 shoe boxes.
Peter Ivermee, an early-retired solicitor and his wife, Eileen, moved to the south coast three years ago in order to set up an OCC regional warehouse and to promote Samaritan's Purse and Operation Christmas Child in Dorset. They joined Christchurch Baptist Church , a church of about 200 members. The church soon wanted to support the project. Peter explains, “It usually only just takes one keen member of a congregation to bring a church on board. Ministers have many calls on their time, but OCC need not be a burden. Once started, enthusiasm for the project usually creates its own momentum. It's a great way to get a church having fun and pulling together.” Last year 21,550 shoe boxes were sent out through the regional warehouse.
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