COLUMN: If the shoe box fits, wear it
The shoe boxes are 12 inches long, 7 inches wide and 4.5 inches deep.
Marilynn Sanders fills them with everything from toys to toothbrushes to puzzles, crayons, whistles, inflatable soccer balls and warm socks.
It’s a tight fit, but she packs a piece of her heart, too.
She can track where the boxes are going, and when they arrive. But she can only close her eyes and imagine the joy on a child’s face when he or she opens the gift knowing someone on a faraway continent cared enough to send it.
A civil service job at Robins Air Force Base brought Marilynn to Middle Georgia, where she met her late husband, Randall, on a blind date.
She married and moved to Eastman in 1993, the same year Operation Christmas Child began as a project of Samaritan’s Purse. Six years later, the shoebox ministry began at her church, First Baptist of Eastman.
She had no idea how much it would impact her life and others.
Folks around Dodge County call her the “Shoe Box Lady.’’
“Randall used to always say he was going to put that on my tombstone,’’ she said.
Marilynn is one of about 9,000 year-round volunteers nationwide for Operation Christmas Child, which has collected and delivered shoe boxes to more than 178 million children in more than 150 countries over the past 27 years. Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, is the president of Samaritan’s Purse, which is headquartered in Boone, N.C.
The dedication of Marilynn and others have helped spearhead the efforts of the Operation Christmas Child ministry at First Baptist of Eastman. It has grown 102 boxes in its first year in 1999 to a record 2,168 last year.
The church became a relay collection center for area churches in 2007 and was designated as a central drop-off location for the four counties of Dodge, Bleckley, Pulaski and Laurens in 2015. Over the past 13 years, FBC Eastman has processed 106,642 boxes.
From the wheatfields of her native Kansas to the wiregrass of Middle Georgia, Marilynn’s path has followed a different script than she might have thought.
She not only found a home, she found a calling.
“I’m not from down here. I wasn’t raised here. I got married and moved here,’’ she said. “But I’ve gotten to know so many people. My husband and I would go to a restaurant, and he would tell me I knew more people than he did. It was because of this connection. When he died (of a heart attack in 2013), the support from all these friends was a life saver for me.’’
She began putting together her first shoeboxes more than 20 years ago. Inside, she included a short letter with her name and address. She never expected a response. It was like writing a note, stuffing it into a bottle and tossing it into the ocean. Or throwing darts in the dark.
Then, in 2003, she heard back from a 10-year-old boy from Kenya. He was living with his parents in South Africa.
His name was Fred Otiini Otanga. He wrote her a thank-you note.
“I still have the letter,’’ Marilynn said. “It became a pen pal friendship.’’
She and a friend from church, traveled to South Africa for Fred’s 13th birthday in March 2006. He lived in a high-rise housing project and attended a government school. They met his mother, Emma, who was a nurse.
Marilynn returned to Eastman and began thinking of creative ways to raise money to send Fred to a private school. She raised $4,000 by breeding her golden retriever and selling the puppies for $450 each.
Marilynn has made three other trips to Africa. In 2009, she went on a mission trip to Kenya. She made arrangements to have Emma flown from South Africa to join them and reunite with some of her family. Emma had not seen her mother in eight years.
Later, Marilynn invited Emma to visit her in America. She stayed with in Eastman for two months, sharing her testimony at local churches and volunteering with Operation Christmas Child.
In 2014, Marilynn traveled to Rwanda with Samaritan’s Purse to distribute shoe boxes on the 20th anniversary of the genocide.
“We gave boxes to the grandchildren of the survivors of the genocide,’’ she said. “It was quite an honor to be selected to go.’’
Last July, Marilynn returned to South Africa to see Fred for the first time in 13 years old. He now is 27. One night, they sat in a courtyard and talked.
“He had big old tears coming down his face,’’ Marilynn said. “He said: ‘When you put me through school, I didn’t realize what you were giving me, and I didn’t take full advantage of it. I wish I had.’ I told him that’s just maturity. He was 13 years old at the time. He understood it now.’’
First Baptist acquired a house on property near the church for its shoe box operation. The pandemic hasn’t stopped a loyal group of resourceful volunteers from gathering at the house every week since July.
Obviously, the numbers of workers has dropped, because of health precautions. In the past, as many as three dozen volunteers would gather every Tuesday night from July to the end of the October.
“Sometimes, every chair would be taken, and we had to turn people (volunteers) away,’’ she said.
National Collection Week is Nov. 16-23. After that, the boxes will be transported to Middle Georgia’s regional drop-off at Byron United Methodist Church. The state’s processing center is in Atlanta.
Marilynn knows there will come a time when she will need to curtail her volunteer work.
But, for now, the day is not marked on any calendar.
“It would be hard for me NOT to do this,’’ she said.
If the shoe box fits, wear it.
Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.