Rosebud, Texas is the kind of place where people greet each other by name on the sidewalks of Main Street. The relaxed friendliness is immediately apparent when you step inside the hardware store owned by the Wallace family. Or at John Donath’s nursery, where customers exchange planting advice while shopping for mums and potting soil.


Operation Christmas Child brings joy and hope to children in desperate situations around the world. To adopt a box that brings the Good News of God's love, click here.The pace of life is laid-back too. At Floyd and Louella Miller’s Olive Bough restaurant, the main topic of conversation is falling cattle prices and Friday night’s football game. You can count the number of stoplights on one finger as you ride past neatly-manicured yards adorned with—you guessed it—a proliferation of rose bushes. It is the epitome of small town charm.

Less than 1,400 people call Rosebud home, but the Texas prairie town located 35 miles south of Waco has a lot to be proud of. Their beloved Cougars won the state 2A Division II high school football championship in 2002. It’s also the hometown of San Diego Chargers All-Pro running back LaDainian Tomlinson.

And now Rosebud has another claim to fame.

“People call us ‘shoe box city,’” said Nettie Hyde, the 77-year-old dynamo who is responsible for the Operation Christmas Child fever that has spread like wildfire through Rosebud and surrounding communities.

It is no exaggeration to state that most of Rosebud’s populace participates in Operation Christmas Child: 16 churches, 50 businesses, schoolchildren, the city council and mayor, the Rosebud News, the Red Hat Society, the volunteer fire department, etc. From plant sales to packing parties to truck-hauling, everyone serves a meaningful role.

In 2007, the relay center at First Baptist Church of Rosebud collected 1,518 shoe boxes—more than the population of the town. This year’s goal is 2,008 gifts.

Catching the Vision
Nettie Hyde was ready for a fresh start when she arrived in Rosebud in 2002. The lifelong Louisianan was a 71-year-old newlywed who had lost her first husband to cancer a few years before. Moving to the Texas prairie offered a new world of adventure, friendship, and challenge.

“God couldn’t have transplanted me to a better place or to a better community of people,” Nettie said. “I didn’t know it at the time, but He had a special work planned for me to do here.”


Nettie with one of more than 500 shoe boxes she packed this year.In 2003, the Women’s Missionary Union at First Baptist of Rosebud discussed packing shoe box gifts that would be sent to hurting children around the world. Nettie had never heard of Operation Christmas Child, but she was eager to learn more.

For 40 years, she had worked with children and adults with disabilities while living in Louisiana. Here was an opportunity to participate in a ministry for children who may not have anyone to love and nurture them.

“Bob and I packed one box that year,” she said. “We laid our hands on the box and prayed for God to bless the child who would receive our gift. Even though we weren’t aware of what God was up to, as we prayed the Lord was already preparing our hearts for a future assignment.”

The next year Nettie and the church WMU director attended an Operation Christmas Child rally in the city of Temple. The guest speaker was Mary Damron, a long-time ambassador for the project who is known for her spunky can-do personality. Nettie immediately found a kindred spirit—and a new calling.

“They say the spirit of Operation Christmas Child is contagious, and I sure caught it that day,” she said with a grin. “I hit the ground running and I haven’t stopped since.”

She told her friend Carol Ellison about the rally. Carol also was won over with excitement for the project and became one of Nettie’s “dollar stretchers,” shopping for shoe box items at sales of 50 to 75 percent off the regular price.

Nettie wasted no time going door-to-door in her rural hamlet of Baileyville, on the outskirts of Rosebud. She handed out Operation Christmas Child brochures and urged her neighbors to get involved. The community’s participation, either through packing boxes, donations, or buying filler items, was 100 percent.

The owners of the country store in nearby Wilderville took a group of children shopping, and they filled 15 boxes during a Sunday afternoon packing party. Folks in the tiny community of Briary got involved too. The three communities packed 52 boxes. Combined with the church’s efforts, the total came to 121.

That’s all the encouragement Nettie needed. She was ready to take the project to the next level.

Helping Hands
“We needed some way to challenge the people in Rosebud,” Nettie said. “I prayed for a theme, and at 4 a.m. one morning God gave it to me: ‘Rosebud Come Alive for OCC in 2005.’ ”

Hyde approached her pastor with the idea of turning First Baptist into a collection point so people would not have to travel to Temple to drop off their boxes. He liked the idea and suggested they set up a center the next year.

“I said, ‘Why not this year?’ So I made some phone calls and we got a relay center set up in 2005,” she said. “We collected 1,073 boxes.”

Much of the money needed to purchase shoe box items and to pay for shipping costs is generated through community fundraisers. From auctions to art shows to plant sales to donation jars kept on the counters of businesses around town, it’s clear that the heart of Rosebud beats for Operation Christmas Child.

Perhaps no one is more committed to the project than Jimmy Rich, a resident at the Heritage House nursing home in Rosebud. Only in his 40s, Jimmy goes to a hospital in Temple three times a week for dialysis treatments. He is confined to a wheelchair, and he has a speech impairment.

Yet none of those challenges have kept Jimmy from doing his part to help hurting children around the world.

Jimmy hands out Operation Christmas Child brochures and asks for donations when he travels to the hospital. He enthusiastically does the same at the nursing home, pointing to the OCC bumper sticker on the back of his wheelchair. And he challenges pastors to tell their congregations about the project.

Jimmy collected $150 in 2005, $165 in 2006, and over $200 last year. He wheeled himself to the front of the church sanctuary one Sunday morning, and handed Nettie a large envelope of donations he had received for Operation Christmas Child. Tears were coursing down his face.

“If someone with his limitations can do this, why can’t I do more?” she said, deeply moved. “Jimmy inspired all of us in church that day.”

The Baker family caught the vision and filled 106 boxes this year. Zorena, her husband Mark, and their son Michael help Nettie purchase shoe box items and lend a hand with organizing her Operation Christmas Child thrift shop.

A native of Guyana, Zorena was raised in the Muslim faith but has been greatly impacted by this Christian ministry for children.

“Zorena told me that she is praying for the project,” Nettie said. “She feels so grateful that Operation Christmas Child is sending boxes to the children in her country.”

The Bakers’ 19-year-old daughter, Angelina, shares a strong calling for the project. Now married and living in Oklahoma, she has taken her passion for Operation Christmas Child across state lines. This holiday season she will serve as the OCC director at her church.

The success of Operation Christmas Child in Rosebud would not be possible without the generosity of John Donath. The nursery owner was planning to go out of business in 2006 due to his failing health and offered to sell his plants to Nettie at a reduced price for one of her fundraisers.

The Mother’s Day sale was a hit, and more blessings were soon to follow. John’s health improved over the next few months, and he decided not to sell the business. Wanting to offer his thanks to God in a tangible way, John donated 120 hanging baskets to Nettie for a Labor Day weekend plant sale. Over $1,000 was made from that sale alone.

Plant sales have become the foundation of fundraising efforts for Operation Christmas Child in the community. More than $3,000 has been raised this year.

Sometimes even passersby get involved. In July, two sisters saw a highway sign for Nettie’s shop and out of curiosity decided to visit. They became fascinated about the missions project and wanted to help. Both make their own jewelry, and they have donated over $200 in sales to Operation Christmas Child. They also assist Nettie with plant sale fundraisers and ask businesses for empty shoe boxes.

“Both of these women and their husbands have joined our church, even though they don’t live in Rosebud,” Nettie said. “God sent them, and it was the little thrift store for Operation Christmas Child that first brought them here.”

The list goes on. One resident anonymously donated $3,500. A dentist donated 1,250 toothbrushes and one family contributed over 700 tubes of toothpaste. As he does each November, the mayor will help load the cartons of shoe boxes from the Rosebud relay center onto trucks for transport to the collection center in Waco. And the ladies of First Baptist put together a community cookbook as a fundraiser with a photo of Nettie’s shoe box house/thrift store gracing the cover.

Little (Shoe Box) House on the Prairie
Because of the massive amounts of shoe box items being accumulated throughout the year, Nettie and her neighbors experienced almost immediate growing pains. They ran out of storage space at First Baptist. Her house became inundated with donated materials.

As always, the Lord provided in a remarkable way. Nettie became friends with Floyd and Louella Miller, a missionary family who had seen children receive Operation Christmas Child boxes while serving in Albania. The Millers were thrilled to learn that there was a relay center in Rosebud, and Nettie was excited to discover Floyd is a contractor.

Nettie mentioned that for some time she had felt God directing her to build a little house that would serve as a workshop/thrift store for Operation Christmas Child. Floyd said he would build it.

“Louella and I drew up a blueprint,” she said. “We wanted the little house to be white, with red and green trim, and candles in the windows. We wanted it to look like a shoe box.”

Floyd completed the one room, 14x40-foot structure behind the Hyde home in August 2006, just in time for the start of shoe box packing season. The mayor and Chamber of Commerce members later attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for what Nettie affectionately calls “our haven for Operation Christmas Child.”

It didn’t take long for “Nettie’s Place” to become a mecca for the Rosebud community. Residents bring donated items of every description to the shop for resale. Antique stores pitch in with holiday knick-knacks. The proceeds are used to buy more shoe box supplies.

Nettie, who has packed over 500 shoe boxes this year, is eternally grateful for everyone in Rosebud and beyond who has touched lives through Operation Christmas Child.

“I genuinely believe that my calling reaches outside of this world,” she said. “I’m glad that there are so many helping hands who will continue the work after I pass on.

“When I get to heaven, I hope the Lord will let me see people on earth packing shoe boxes.”

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Samaritan's Purse , United States , Operation Christmas Child , Straight from the Heart of Texas