Concordia campus packs 195 boxes for Operation Christmas Child

Pam Langewisch’s discount shop for Operation Christmas Child items.

Photo credit: Dylan Buechler

By Dylan Buechler

Mission Minded students packing boxes. Photo: Dylan Buechler.

Concordia students and community members packed 195 shoeboxes full of toys, clothing, literature and school supplies for Operation Christmas Child over the past month, sharing the Gospel message and providing gifts to children around the world who would not otherwise receive Christmas presents.

Junior Alina Sankey received one of these Operation Christmas Child boxes as a child being raised in orphanages in her home country of Ukraine. Sankey described her story of receiving a box and what it meant to her.

“One night, our director in the orphanage in Odessa, Ukraine, [said] ‘Hey, let’s go outside, you have some boxes, some shoe boxes to open. It’s a gift,’” Sankey said. “I was like, ‘Shoe boxes? What? We’re going to get shoes?’ And then [they gave] us presents.”

Sankey said the box gave her material gifts as well as the gift of God’s love.

“It was so meaningful because that was probably like one or two presents I got the whole school year [that was] on Christmas,” she said. “It was very meaningful, coming from some person in the world that I didn’t even know, but that showed, like, God’s love in action.”

Sankey said she was encouraged as a child by hearing the good news of Jesus through the people who distributed the boxes. She saw the service project at Concordia as a meaningful way to give a gift in the same way she received one.

Mission Minded Students packing boxes. Photo: Dylan Buechler.

“It feels fulfilling,” she said. “We cannot be there for them, but we can pack this, pray about that person, that child, that they feel like Christ’s love for them and hear the good news that they’re saved. Nothing will separate them from the love of God. This is like a gift. It was given to me. I want to give it to others.”

The initiative, run by the national humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, attracted the participation of individual students, friend groups, sports teams, faculty members and Concordia community members throughout the month of November.

Director of the Global Opportunities Center Julie Johnston Hermann said many kinds of people participated in the project, whether packing boxes or donating items.

“The dancing and cheer group got boxes to do it,” Hermann said. “Football group has done it. And of course, just like random people… Sometimes people won’t pack boxes [but they’ll] just donate stuff.”

Hermann said Operation Christmas Child is important because “it’s a very tangible thing you can do, and it’s got a very tangible destination.”

Samaritan’s Purse is a Christian organization that provides biblical resources as well as Christmas gifts to the kids who receive the boxes.

“What’s cool about Samaritan’s Purse also is they don’t just go, ‘Here’s a box,’ and leave,” Hermann said. “They go, ‘Here’s a box. And by the way, we have a Bible study.’ So, [the recipients] actually hear about the love of Jesus.”

“I think it’s a really meaningful thing too,” she said. “Kids realize, ‘Hey, people care for me.’ And here’s the thing, maybe the next extension is, ‘Hey, God also cares for you.’”

Pam Langewisch, the wife of Concordia’s Professor of Business Administration Dr. Andrew Langewisch, volunteered at a shoebox-packing event in Thom. She said the goal of Operation Christmas Child is about more than just presents.

Mission Minded Students packing boxes. Photo: Dylan Buechler.

“The point of Operation Christmas Child is to spread the gospel,” Langewisch said. “And that’s why we participate here at Concordia and churches in Seward and so forth.”

For sophomore Kennedee Canales, her family has participated in packing Operation Christmas Child boxes for years. She expressed her enjoyment of the service project.

“Operation Christmas Child. has been something that me and my family have done for years since I was a kid, and it has been something I love doing since,” she said. “Hearing that a kid gets to experience joy on the other side of the world is such a good feeling to know that that’s going to happen, you bring joy to someone else.”