Packing shoeboxes continues legacy and honors grandfather
Published 12:10 am Sunday, November 10, 2024
One of the messages that was being written for a card to go into a shoebox. – Karen Kistler
Campbell Ellsworh, left, helps to make room for more gifts in this shoebox. — Karen Kistler
Campbell Ellsworth, at right, and teachers, Shannon Ellsworth, front, and Brooke Smith help students with decisions for their boxes. – Karen Kistler
Campbell Ellworth, left in gray, and Shannon Ellsworth, in middle, gives the boxes one more check before adding to the completed stack. — Karen Kistler
Sandy Jordan, Jr. Kindergarten teacher helped the students make cards for the boxes. — Karen Kistler
Campbell Ellsworth, far right, and Shannon Ellworth, left, and Clara Edenburn, Samaritan’s Purse area coordinator, watch the children select items. – Karen Kistler
Campbell Ellsworth encourages a student as he makes decisions about items for his box. – Karen Kistler
Campbell Ellsworth provides advice to the students about making selections for their shoeboxes. – Karen Kistler
CHINA GROVE — Continuing the legacy is what prompted Campbell Ellsworth to set a goal of packing enough Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes to fill a dump truck and to do so in memory of her late grandfather David Ervin.
And she is well on her way as she has worked to earn money to purchase items to fill the boxes and received help from classmates to pack some of them during a shoebox packing party Nov. 6 at her China Grove home.
Operation Christmas Child, which is a ministry project of Samaritan’s Purse, is not new to Campbell, a fourth grade student at Salisbury Academy. She said she has been packing them with her family since she was three and shared that her mom, Shannon Ellsworth, a teacher at the school, has “always done this since she was a little kid,” plus her granddad had likewise packed shoeboxes.
“So,” Campbell said, “I was like, why don’t I keep doing the legacy.” Plus she said she enjoys doing this because she knows that these boxes are “going to kids to help them, that don’t have anything.”
The Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, as noted on the organization’s website, are filled with a variety of items including toys, school supplies, hygiene items and more to help children around the world and as a tangible way to demonstrate God’s love.
Ervin owned a construction company, Ellsworth said, and Campbell said that he did grading, so she thought with his love of Samaritan’s Purse and the family’s history of giving to the ministry, why not pack enough boxes to fill his dump truck and thus honor him.
“He was really a larger-than-life kind of guy,” Ellsworth said. “He loved having really big, kinda crazy goals. So I figured he would love that so much.”
And Ellsworth herself thought the idea of packing and donating this many boxes “was really amazing.”
Clara Edenburn, volunteer area coordinator with Rowan County’s Samaritan’s Purse/Operation Christmas Child, was at the packing party and said this was a huge goal and she felt it would help them exceed their goal for the county, which is 8,000 shoeboxes.
The area coordinator, she said she has a great team of volunteers that “work as a Rowan County team all year long to get ready for this, for just shoeboxes.”
Last year, Edenburn said, Rowan County collected 7,105 shoeboxes, which was above the previous year’s goal, and this year’s goal for the county would be roughly a 12-percent increase.
She provided some additional statistics and facts about the shoebox gifts noting they are collected in multiple countries in addition to the United States. These include Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
In 2023, more than 11.3 million shoebox gifts were collected and this year, Operation Christmas Child hopes to collect enough to reach 12 million children.
None of the boxes remain in the United States, Edenburn said, noting it is a “reaching the ends of the earth with the gospel” ministry.
The initial connection with Salisbury Academy, which was through a student relations team member, took place last year, Edenburn said, and Campbell was the one who enjoyed packing boxes so much and set this big goal this year and invited her class to help, and “now you see how it’s grown.”
Campbell has been working hard to raise the money needed to buy the items to pack the boxes including making and selling jewelry.
She said she attended a jewelry camp two years ago and learned how to make all kinds of jewelry and decided to use this skill to help her raise money and began making earrings and bracelets.
“So I made 4,000, I think,” Campbell said, “and that’s what got it started.”
She has also sold snacks at a 5K event in Charlotte, worked at the farmers market, participated in craft shows at multiple churches and sold items on the internet.
Then on the weekends, it has been off to the store where they fill up her mom’s car and bring the items home to pack boxes.
Currently, they have packed 400-450 boxes from what she has purchased with more items and a donation helping her to continue packing additional ones.
At the packing party, the classmates came to Campbell’s home and brought additional items with them as part of the classes’ “Giving Party” donations, which were packed, and at the end of the event, another 94 boxes had been completed to add to Campbell’s count.
When the Salisbury Academy junior kindergarten and kindergarten arrived, they had lunch and afterward were divided into three groups with one group packing boxes, a second making cards to go into the boxes and a third decorating cookies for snacks.
Groups rotated throughout the afternoon until each student had a chance to participate in each activity.
Several other teachers and volunteers helped to oversee the groups as Campbell assisted the children doing the packing, providing help and encouragement to each as she showed them how to arrange the items and possibly fit one or more items in the box.
She first provided advice on how to pack telling them to imagine they had no toys and that “for Christmas somebody spent time and gave you this box. Think what you would like if you had no toys.”
They were instructed to make sure the boxes were really special for those that would be receiving them and that they were stuffed full.
The children then made their way around the room, carefully making their selections as they collected a stuffed animal or other larger toy, and then some art supplies were added, smaller toys and toothbrushes, soap, socks and more items made their way into the boxes until they were filled and closed, the correct label checked and the box was added to the completed stack and ready to go to a central drop-off location and then to the processing center, and in time into the hands of a child somewhere around the world.
Campbell said that her favorite items were the stuffed animals or the little animals that squeak, “and I think kids will just really love it.”
And when the children receive these boxes and they are opened, she hopes they will enjoy the “cool big items” and they say ‘wow’ which is why they are called ‘wow items’ and they “will just start playing with it and enjoy it,” she said.
Edenburn said she loved seeing the excitement of Campbell and the children packing.
“She’s put all this together, been the one to raise the money, buy the items and for her to share the joy of it with all these classmates is just really special. I love it,” she said.
And Campbell was thankful for the classmates coming to help her fill the dump truck.
“They came just for me,” she said. And added that “it means a lot to me because there’s no way I could do this alone. It’s just so amazing.”
Watching all the children, Edenburn said this was a blessing to have them take part in this outreach, but, she said, “it’s really a way to teach your kids to give back at a young age.”
And the children were enjoying it too as Campbell asked Collin, one of the little ones helping if he liked packing the boxes and he said yes, and when asked what he liked about it, he agreed with Campell who said it was good because it was “going to kids in need.”
