It's shoe box time!

Right now, people all around the world are packing shoe boxes with small toys, clothing, candy, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and other fun things. Eventually, those shoe boxes will be distributed in more than 100 countries, quite possibly becoming the only gift poor children will receive this year. Here at Operation Christmas Child, we are hoping for at least 8.2 million shoe box gifts to be distributed because that means 8.2 million children and their families will know God loves them.

While all those people are packing their shoe box gifts, busy, busy workers are setting up six Operation Christmas Child Processing Centers around the nation. I work at the Processing Center in Denver, Colorado. This is what our warehouse looked like just a couple weeks ago.

But then people and supplies and lots of boxes started arriving. The people used the supplies and the boxes to help us become a Processing Center.

The people also built towers with the boxes...

Soon hundreds of thousands of volunteers will walk in the doors of our warehouse to help us process hundreds of thousands of shoe boxes. Those hundreds of thousands of shoe boxes will be loaded into semi trucks and driven to Mexico and Central and South America. Local ministry partners in those Latin American countries will then give the boxes to hundreds of thousands of really excited kids.

And that -- roughly -- is how Operation Christmas Child works. Your little shoe box joins dozens, hundreds, thousands, and millions of other little shoe boxes to eventually reach one very special little boy or girl. It's pretty amazing.

It's shoe box time, folks! Fill 'em up and turn 'em in by Monday, November 23. Many thanks...

For more information on how to pack a shoe box and where to drop it off, please visit www.samaritanspurse.org.