DBU students, faculty fill shoeboxes with love_120604
Posted: 12/03/04
DBU students, faculty fill shoeboxes with love
By George Henson
Staff Writer
DALLAS–Love may not fit in a box, but students at Dallas Baptist University hope children who receive shoeboxes filled with goodies will know someone cared enough to send a token of their love.
DBU is a shoebox collection center for Operation Christmas Child, and students take the shoeboxes filled with presents for children in 95 countries and pack them in larger boxes for shipping.
The children who will receive the boxes live in places ravaged by disease, war, terrorism, natural disaster and famine. Without the love of volunteers, these children would have no chance of experiencing a gift at Christmas time.
| Brance Barker of Arlington, a graduate student at Dallas Baptist University, helps pack shoeboxes for Opertion Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan's Purse. |
Operation Christmas Child, a project of Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse ministry, is important to many students, staff and faculty at DBU, said Mark Hale, associate vice president for student affairs. The project has grown considerably over the years the university has participated.
“This has gone from a 'load 'em in the back of the van' project to this year, when we rented a 25-foot trailer, and I don't know if it will be big enough,” he said.
The university's goal for this year was 3,000 shoeboxes. The final tally was 3,087, with about half donated by students, staff and faculty. The others came from individuals and churches in the area.
After the students loaded the shoeboxes into packing boxes, they took them to Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano for the next leg of their journey.
Brance Barker, a graduate student at DBU, said he has been participating in the Operation Christmas Child project for 10 years, since his days as a student at Grace Preparatory Academy in Arlington. His delight in helping meshes well with DBU's focus on ministry.
“It's neat that you're able to provide for children all over the world. DBU has such a heart for international students. This is a big emphasis on our campus. I love being able to support that,” Barker said.
DBU begins its on-campus emphasis in an October chapel service each year, Hale explained, adding the university community gets behind the project as the holidays approach.
“This is a great way for our students to get a taste for missions. This really is global missions done locally. It's one easy way for our students to get the missions ball rolling–especially our new students who may never have been on a mission trip or had any type of involvement in missions,” he said.
Packing the shoeboxes in shipping crates left DBU junior Dan Gibson thinking about the children who would receive the boxes, wherever they might be.
“You load boxes and wonder where this box is going–what part of the world will this wind up in,” he said.
“Then you think of the children. It's very rewarding.”