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Williams Lake family and friends fill shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child

Charity sees gifts delivered around the world for needy children
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It’s that time of year when thoughts turn to Christmas, and for many that means looking for ways to be charitable.

For the Wolf family, an important part of their Christmas tradition includes filling shoeboxes for needy children around the world as part of Samaritan’s Purse’s Operation Christmas Child.

For the past 15 years or more Sue has been filling shoeboxes because she herself received similar gifts growing up in East Germany, where resources were scarce and churches were required to preach the communist doctrine.

In a time and place where people had to line up to receive a banana, she says receiving a donated box filled with clothes, chocolates and other treats was a very special gift.

“I remember even keeping the wrappers on the Kleenex because the little packet opened and closed,” Sue says. “I would save my little treasures in the packet all year.”

Sue was 14 when the wall between West and East Germany came down in 1989 and she learned how people on the other side of the wall lived.

She became a nurse and worked in an operating room in West Germany where she met her husband Dr. Mike Wolf.

“He grew up completely differently from me,” Sue says. “He grew up in the free world on the west side of the wall where they could buy everything.”

Now as a Christian Sue is teaching her own children the importance of giving back to those in need.

“It feels like giving back what we received, and it makes me happy,” she said Wednesday, while packing shoeboxes with everything from bar soap, to hair and toothbrushes to small gifts.

In recent years Sue has hosted a shoebox party to include friends and neighbours as a way to promote a sense of community while also filling more boxes. This year her group filled 44 boxes.

The third week in November is National Collection Week of the boxes.

For more information on the program, visit Samaritan’s Purse website.

– With files from Gaeil Farrar



Angie Mindus

About the Author: Angie Mindus

A desire to travel led me to a full-time photographer position at the Williams Lake Tribune in B.C.’s interior.
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