1. My Holiday Service Project By: Parker Colbath

2. All over the world, there are millions of deprived children who will not receive one single present this holiday season.

4. For my Service Project, I decided to put in an effort to help these children.

5. Operation Christmas Child To do this, I teamed up with the youth of my church to pack boxes for Operation Christmas Child. This charitable association organizes volunteers to pack shoeboxes filled with toys and necessities. The boxes are then shipped overseas and given to children in impoverished countries. Most of the children receiving shoeboxes would never see a Christmas present at all if it was not for Operation Christmas Child.

6. Shopping To begin my service project, I went shopping with my fellow youth for items that could be packed into boxes and donated to Operation Christmas Child. Youth and adults alike put some money toward the cause, and we went into a few different stores in search of packable items. We’re all piling on to the bus to do some shopping!

7. One of the stores we visited was Dollar Tree. We picked out items such as tissues, tooth brushes, soap, deodorant, and other packable necessities. Everyone was assigned an item, and it was their job to find it. My item was tissue packets.

8. We’re checking out!

9. We left Dollar Tree with eight bags of items and one long receipt. We’re ready to pack some boxes!

10. Well, not quite… At Target, we picked out toys and games that would be suitable for the Christmas Child boxes. We brought those and the items from Dollar Tree back to our church so that we could pack them.

11. Our Packing Party For help in packing the boxes, we shouted out to other members of our church. Together with those members, we hosted a packing party that led to just over 30 packed boxes ready to be shipped overseas. They are empty now, but they won’t be for long!

12. All of the toys we bought are lined up and ready to be packed. Wow! Do we have enough boxes?

13. As the hosts of this party, it was our job to not only pack our own boxes, but to help younger children with theirs. Let’s see if we can make this fit …

14. My Boxes By the end of the party, I had packed two full boxes.

15. Even Santa himself showed up to help us!

16. The Finished Product This isn’t even half of the boxes we packed.

17. After two hours of working, we’re finally finished. That’s me

18. The Christmas Child Warehouse To finish my service project, some of my fellow youth and Ivolunteeredat the Operation Christmas Child warehouse in Charlotte.

19. Once again, we all piled onto our church buses, this time for the drive to Charlotte. The Operation Christmas Child staff were very welcoming and organized. Our group was ushered in and immediately put to work.

20. We have arrived.

21. First, we were briefed on the jobs assigned to us. All of our youth were in a group together, each with a different job. My job was known as the “inspector.”

22. We worked for around four hours.

24. Some of the youth I worked with were Buddy, in the foreground, and Alan, in the back ground.

25. To help us and the groups around us, there were two members of the staff. They advised us on things that we were unsure about, like whether something was suitable for a box or not. They were very kind and helpful; without them, we would have been completely lost.

26. All of these boxes are ready to go.

27. After all of our hard work, it was time for us to leave.

28. We can only hope that children all over the world will be affected by this small amount of service.

31. Special thanks to: My church, First Presbyterian of Monroe My parents, for taking pictures and giving me ideas and morale boosters Mrs. Rose, for giving us the project and helping us along the way Music: Give a Little Bit - Super Tramp Imagine - John Lennon Thank You!