By Claudia Loucks
Geneseo Current
Shelly Emerick, left, a member of the Operation Christmas Child Church Relations Committee; and Shawn King, director of Children’s Ministry at Geneseo First Methodist Church, are inviting area residents to join them in a Jump Rope Event to benefit Operation Christmas Child. The event is from 10 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturday in the Fellowship Hall of Geneseo First Methodist, 302 North State St.
The event is open to the community and children in fifth grade and younger should be accompanied by an adult. For more information, contact Shawn King at s.king@peopleneedjesus.org.
Those attending will be helping to turn T-shirts into usable jump ropes that will be packed into shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. It takes three T-shirts to make a jump rope and donations of gently used T-shirts will be accepted, providing they are clean.
The goal for the local outreach is to make 1,000 jump ropes.
Operation Christmas Child is an outreach of Samaritan Purse, an international Christian relief and evangelism organization. The non-profit organization specializes in meeting the critical needs of victims of war, poverty, disease and natural disaster, in order to demonstrate God’s love and share the Gospel.
The OCC ministry uses the shoebox as a tool to open the door for the Gospel and make disciples of all tribes, tongues and nations. OCC started in the United Kingdom in 1990 as an outreach to Romanian Orphans and OCC began in North America in 1993.
Emerick said more than 11,330,126 shoeboxes were filled in the United States in 2023.