Operation Christmas Child volunteers are collecting simple shoe box gifts which will be sorted and sent using whatever means necessary - sea containers, trucks, buses, trains, airplanes, helicopters, boats, camels, even dog sleds - to reach suffering children around the world.

This nonprofit organization hopes to bring Christmas around the world with its goal to collect more than 10,000 gift boxes.

Community members may join the effort by filling shoe boxes with school supplies, toys, necessity items, candy and a letter of encouragement. Step-by-step shoe box packing instructions are available at www.samaritanspurse.org. In central New York there are drop stations in Eaton, Liverpool, Canastota and Auburn. The Auburn station is the Church of the Nazarene on Genesee Street Road. Donna Buell, the wife of the church's pastor, is the local chairperson for the project.

“We collect the boxes that other people have packed. Usually 50 or 60 groups and agencies have made the boxes,” she said.

Monday a large truck will pick up the boxes. Many times the packers include letters telling the recipient about themselves and sometimes a photograph.

According to Buell, “There are more than 2,000 drop off locations nationwide like the one here in Auburn.”

At the end of the collection week, each of these centers transports the boxes to one of six warehouses in the United States where the gifts are inspected and prepared to be shipped overseas. The shoe boxes are hand delivered by teams in places such as poor neighborhoods, children's hospitals, orphanages and refugee camps. Last year more than 7.6 million boxes were packed and sent around the world to more than 100 countries.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse, an organization that has been headed by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, since 1993. The company's name comes from the story in the Bible. Jesus told his listeners to love their neighbors. A man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus then told a parable of a Jewish man who was beaten by thieves and left to die. Two men passed him and ignored him. The third man, a Samaritan, stopped and gave him first aid, and took him where he could get help.

Jesus then asked the man, “Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the victim?” The man said the Samaritan was the neighbor. Jesus' reply to the man is the motto for Samaritan's purse, “Go and do likewise.”

The organization's Web site says, “The work is often dangerous, as it was for the Samaritan, but the message we carry is much too important. We are quick to bandage the wounds we see, but the Samaritan didn't stop there and neither do we. In addition to meeting their immediate, emergency needs, we help these victims recover and get back on their feet.”

Samaritan's Purse also provides emergency relief, such as food, water and temporary shelter for victims of natural disaster, war, disease and famine. They operate community development and vocational programs in impoverished neighborhoods and villages. The Great Physician medical assistance program provides medical care and supplies for mission hospitals and clinics.