National OCC Collection Week 2021 runs from Nov. 15 – 22nd.
Halloween is over. Christmas is coming –er, Thanksgiving is coming, and that means this must be OCC Collection Week!
You filled your shoebox. You brought it your church. Now what? Once collected, all the churches are bring their van loads of shoeboxes to their local Collection Center. Ever wonder what happens next?
Your local Collection Center is a great place to volunteer as a family. You can spend many hours there while having so much fun too! Okay, so there will probably be a lot of cookies and cocoa but that’s just icing on the cake! It is a great way to serve with a child who needs additional assistance.
All week long, churches and other groups who have done shoebox collections bring their haul into the Collection center. There, the shoeboxes are counted and fitted into cartons. Fitting shoeboxes into the cartons is a lot like playing a life-size game of Tetris. You want to get as many as you can into every carton.
The forklifts lift them up into the semi trailers that will take them to the huge, regional Distribution Centers. From there, they get sorted by age and gender, then packaged for delivery all over the world.
And rest assured, your filling a box is only the beginning. The volunteer hours that are put into this ministry each year will astound you. So many people are invested in these boxes before they get into the hands of the recipients.
The prayers that are lifted, the love that is sent along with each donation, priceless. The boxes are prayed over many times in their journey to their final destination. When these boxes are opened, love oozes out of them. It’s like sending a giant hug.
If this is your first time donating, here are Ten Things You Should Know About OCC Shoeboxes. Now is the time to get your boxes turned in!
