By SALINA POST
Operation Christmas Child is the topic of an upcoming program at the First Southern Baptist Church.
The program is scheduled for 7-8:30 p.m. on July 21 in the church, 2401 S. Ohio Street. The program is open to the public.
The speakers will be Pastor Mark and Cherry Brumbelow of the Grace Baptist Church in Wild Peach, Texas.
In 2016, when Grace Baptist Church had only 30 members, the church packed 2,000 Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts, according to information provided by the Salina church. In 2017, the Texas church packed 8,030 shoebox gifts, despite the fact that many of the church members' homes were flooded by Hurricane Harvey. Shortly afterward, the Brumbelows were invited to Barbuda to distribute shoebox gifts to children who had lost their homes to Hurricane Irma.
Additionally, Zac Vakadewatabua, who received a shoebox gift when he was a boy in Fiji, is scheduled to participate in the presentation. Vakadewatabua, who now lives in Junction City with his wife and children, serves as the children and youth director at the Clay Center United Methodist Church.
With Vakadewatabua's father as the family's only breadwinner, his parents did their best to provide for their five children, but found it challenging to be able to afford education, gifts, and toys for them, according to biographical information provided by the First Southern Baptist Church.
When Vakadewatabua was about nine years old, he received an Operation Christmas Child shoebox gift that included coloring pencils, crayons, a jump rope, and his favorite, a yo-yo. He took the yo-yo with him everywhere he went and slept with it at night. That gift box planted a seed in his heart that helped shape the man he has become.