By JoEllen Smith
Special to the Pflag

When local business owner Ray Garner became involved with Operation Christmas Child 10 years ago, he and his wife started filling just two shoe boxes full of toys and toiletries – one for a boy and one for a girl.

The shoe boxes the Garners filled were then taken to First Baptist Church in Pflugerville, the local drop off site.
“It was easy, not very expensive, and a good thing to do,” said Garner of what prompted he and his wife to get involved.”

After that first year, they realized they wanted to do more, so they doubled the shoe boxes they filled the next year. Now, they pack 24 boxes for 12 boys and 12 girls. And their involvement doesn’t stop there.

For the past two years Garner has been volunteering as the Central Texas coordinator for Operation Christmas Child. According to the Samaritan’s Purse Web site (samaritanspurse.org), the mission of Operation Christmas Child is “to demonstrate God’s love in a tangible way to needy children around the world, and together with the local church worldwide, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.”
Garner also adds that “we want the kids to enjoy the blessings of things we enjoy every day.”

In the last year, Operation Christmas Child distributed 8.2 million shoeboxes worldwide. According to Garner, 400,000 of those boxes were collected in the Texas and Louisiana area, with 24,008 coming directly out of the Central Texas area.

Kids ages 2 to 14 receive shoes boxes filled with age-appropriate toys, coloring books and toiletries.

“Some of the most popular items for the older kids are actually good socks, work gloves, hammers and nails and soccer balls,” Garner said. “Fourteen-year-olds in places like Ecuador have a lot more responsibilities to deal with than the average fourteen-year-old here. But all the kids love flashlights, especially the wind-up ones.”

Each year, the area coordinators have the opportunity to go and be a part of a distribution team in Ecuador. However, the Samaritan’s Purse organization does not pay for the trip. The area coordinators are responsible to either pay their own way or raise funds for their trip.

“All the coordination for traveling is done by Samaritan’s Purse, but they are very frugal with the money they receive because they want as much of the money as possible to go to the kids,” said Garner.

This year, Garner was able to be a part of the 80 coordinators from across the country to go on a distribution trip. From Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, members of the team gathered in Houston to fly to Quito, Ecuador. In Quito, the group was able to sleep for about four hours, and then was back on a plane to fly to Manta, which is located on the coast of Ecuador.

Garner describes Manta as “a poor city with many small, independent businesses and the average income is $250 to $350 a month.”

The shoe box distribution points were planned throughout the city, ranging from small churches and schools to a prison and a dump where kids were living. At distribution sites, the number of boxes passed out ranged anywhere from 50 to in the hundreds.

One of the favorite memories for Garner was the moment when the kids opened the boxes.

“We would have this group of kids and they would all be waiting patiently until they all got a box,” he said. “Then, we would do a 3-2-1 countdown and they would open the boxes. But then they would shut them quickly again, like they just didn’t want the moment to go away.”

When twin girls walked up at the end of a distribution time, Garner was faced with another impacting moment.

“We had one shoe box left, and there was a conversation of who should get the box,” he added. “We explained we only had one left, and if they didn’t mind sharing, they could have it. The girls were fine with that – they had to share things all their life. So, we did the 3-2-1 countdown and they opened the box. When the twins opened the box, we saw that everything in the box was in duplicate – two of everything! I just can’t describe how miraculously God does things.”

This is Garner’s first trip, but he is “hoping to go many times and would love to do it again.”