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Meeting critical
needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease,
and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. |
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Friday 4 July
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Operation Christmas Child
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Millions of suffering children across
15 Eastern European countries experienced the love of
God last Christmas thanks to more than 1.1 million special
deliveries of personally wrapped shoe boxes.
These boxes, filled with presents and often hand-written notes of encouragement,
were sent from schools, businesses, shopping centres, churches, families, prisons,
hospitals, telephone exchanges, and even the Prime Minister,
Tony Blair.
Just a few hours from the UK are countries that are recovering from the effects
of civil war and other disasters that have caused extreme poverty. Operation
Christmas Child teams worked with established national charities and a British
Embassy to distribute presents to children at refugee camps, shelled
flats, hospitals, schools and gypsy sites and to street
children.
In Croatia Operation Christmas Child was the first international charity to visit
a refugee camp of 450 adults and 130 children in Rokovici. God’s love was
shared with the delighted children as they stood in the freezing cold and unwrapped
their precious presents.
‘
You are wonderful,’ said one child to a journalist helping
on the trip. Scores of lorries travelled from warehouses
in the UK to the far corners of Europe to ensure that 1,185,318
presents were delivered in time for Christmas. Even the world’s
largest plane, the Russian-built Antonov was used to transport
presents from the USA and Dublin.
Many of the shoe boxes were distributed to the child victims
of HIV/AIDS. Bono, lead singer of the rock group U2, supported
the project in its efforts to help hurting children worldwide. ‘ People
think it’s going to take a miracle or an act of God to
put this right. I don’t believe that. I believe God is
waiting for us to act,’ he said at the departure ceremony
for one of the planes.
‘ You cannot describe how excited the children get as they wait for the
presents,’ said Gordana Angelica, manager of an orphanage in Croatia.
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They
have very little, and have had hard lives already… but we have to give
them hope.’ So many lives have been touched and so much hope has been given
by sharing the love of Jesus Christ – the true meaning of Christmas – with
these children. |
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> Thank
you report ( 26 meg )
To view the thank you report you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader click
here to download.
Below are two video clips. Please click the link to the right of the
text to view the video clip.
To view the following video clip you need the Quicktime Player. Click
here to download. |
| 11 / 07 / 2003 |
OCC 2003
( 9 MB - 35 mins to download on a modem ) |
View
video clip |
| 11 / 07 / 2003 |
OCC 2002 (
8 MB - 31 minutes to download on a modem ) |
View
video clip |
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Copyright 2003 © Samaritan’s
Purse International. All rights reserved. |
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