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Spiritual Impact Stories

Sending Joy Through a Shoe Box

It was an answer to prayer for Miguel and Miluska when Operation Christmas Child brought shoe box gifts to their village. The brother and sister needed shoes and school supplies, but their family did not have the money to buy anything except the bare necessities for survival. Miluska received a pair of shoes in her box, while Miguel found an assortment of pens, pencils, and a notebook in his.

The gifts brought them joy, but the best was yet to come. Miguel and Miluska enrolled in the discipleship program, and as they learned more about Jesus the two siblings wanted Him to be their eternal Savior.

“We felt like the happiest children when we accepted Him,” Miguel said. “We believe that God is real. For that reason, we surrendered to Christ and now we have many friends at church.”

Answered Prayer
For as long as she can remember, Rose Marie had one simple wish. She wanted to own a beautiful doll like the ones she saw on television. Her parents could not afford to buy one with their meager wages as farm laborers, so the 10-year-old girl made her own dolls out of scraps of clothing.

A catastrophic earthquake in August 2007 destroyed hundreds of adobe buildings in her hometown of San Clemente. All but the front wall of Rose Marie’s house collapsed into a pile of rubble.

Samaritan’s Purse gave her parents plastic sheeting to use for temporary walls until they could rebuild their house. We also provided blankets and emergency food supplies. Then, to Rose Marie’s delight, Operation Christmas Child came with shoe box gifts.

She could not believe her eyes when she saw what was inside the box—a handwritten letter, a stuffed animal, and a doll with wavy blond hair and stylish clothes.

“I ran home and told my mother, ‘Now I have a real doll!’ I was crying and laughing at the same time,” Rose Marie said. “God has answered my prayers.”

God answered another important prayer. Before the earthquake, there were conflicts and arguments in her home. That ended when her family came to faith in Jesus after seeing God’s love expressed through the relief work and the gifts.

“After everyone in my family gave their hearts to the Lord, it has been peaceful in our house,” Rose Marie said. “We don’t have fights like we used to. I pray and I thank God each night for everything that He has done for us.”

An Eternal Impact
Zandra Fausto was 9 when she was invited to a church to receive a neatly wrapped shoe box from Operation Christmas Child. Inside she found notebooks, candy, a toothbrush, and a calculator that she still has over a decade later.

There’s another thing she still holds onto from that day—her relationship with Jesus Christ.

“They told me we received the gifts because of Jesus,” she said. “As a child, I thought, ‘How could Jesus do that?’ but now I know it was because of the wonderful people who serve Jesus.”

Zandra is now a university student, the music minister at her church in Lima, and a Sunday school teacher. She also serves as a translator for our Operation Christmas Child teams in Peru and can often be seen talking to children as they open their boxes, helping them read through the Christian literature offered with each box and telling them about Jesus, the greatest gift of all.