Flying Shoeboxes
by pilot Dallas Derksen
Earlier this year [2016] I had the opportunity to conduct a flight to north-eastern Mongolia. This was a bit of a unique flight in that I was given the opportunity to see something that I had been involved in before, but had never seen first-hand. On this flight I carried people from a local church in Ulaanbaatar as well as several people from Samaritan’s Purse (SP). We climbed onto the plane and flew off to do an Operation Christmas Child shoebox delivery.
We landed just outside a small village and were driven into the town where we met the local pastor and his family. They graciously welcomed us into their home and served us a hot meal that they had prepared for us. They live right beside their small church building and after the meal they talked with us for a little bit about the challenges of trying to grow their church in this small rural setting. When children and parents began to show up, we moved over into their small church building to watch the process.
The children sat down on the benches and sang several songs (Mongolians love to sing). After the singing, one of the ladies from the church got up and went through a gospel presentation for the children. This is something that SP had developed and refined over the years to be used during these shoebox deliveries, and had been translated into Mongolian for them.
Once they finished telling the gospel story, it was time! Each one of the children received their shoebox and waited patiently (or not so patiently) for everyone to receive theirs. Once all of the kids had received their boxes they opened them and had a look inside. It was great to watch them pick out different things to show their friends. I saw a bag of marbles being held up in the air, as well as numerous stuffed toys and several other things. Colouring books also seemed to be fairly well received as they rifled through their boxes.
That was a special day as I watched the shoeboxes being handed out on the other side of the world in a country that does not even celebrate Christmas! If you pack a shoebox every year, remember to pray for the child receiving it.
