Shoebox packing continues the legacy and honors grandfather – Salisbury Post

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One of the messages written to put a card in a shoebox. – Karen Kistler

Campbell Ellsworh, left, helps make room for more gifts in this shoebox. – Karen Kistler

Campbell Ellsworth, right, and teachers, Shannon Ellsworth, front, and Brooke Smith help students make decisions about their boxes. – Karen Kistler

Campbell Ellworth, left in gray, and Shannon Ellsworth, center, check the boxes one more time before adding them to the completed pile. – Karen Kistler

Sandy Jordan Jr. The kindergarten teacher helped the students make cards for the boxes. – Karen Kistler

Campbell Ellsworth, far right, and Shannon Ellworth, left, and Clara Edenburn, area coordinator for Samaritan’s Purse, 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 gives the students advice on making choices for their shoe boxes. – Karen Kistler

CHINA GROVE – Continuing the legacy is what led Campbell Ellsworth to set a goal of packing enough Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes to fill a dump truck in memory of her late grandfather David Ervin.

And she’s on a roll, as she’s been working to earn money to buy items to fill the boxes and got help from classmates to pack some during a shoebox packing party on Nov. 6 at her China Grove home.

Operation Christmas Child, 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 3 and said her mother, Shannon Ellsworth, a teacher at the school, “has always done this since she was a little kid,” and that her grandfather also packed shoe boxes.

“So,” Campbell said, “I thought, why not continue the legacy.” Plus, she said she enjoys doing this because she knows these boxes “go to kids to help them who don’t have anything.”

Operation Christmas Child’s shoe boxes, as listed 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 show God’s love .

Ervin owned a construction company, Ellsworth said, and Campbell said he gave numbers, so she thought, with his love of Samaritan’s Purse and the family’s history of donating to the ministry, why not pack enough boxes to fill his dump truck and to honor him in this way. .

“He was truly a man larger than life,” Ellsworth said. “He liked to have really big, kind of crazy goals. So I thought he would like that.”

And Ellsworth himself thought the idea of ​​packing and donating so many boxes was “really amazing.”

Clara Edenburn, volunteer area coordinator with Samaritan’s Purse/Operation Christmas Child in Rowan County, was at the wrapping party and said this was a huge goal and she thought it would help them exceed their goal for the county of 8,000 shoe boxes.

As area coordinator, she said she has a great team of volunteers who “work as a Rowan County team all year round to prepare for this, just for shoeboxes.”

Last year, Edenburn said, Rowan County collected 7,105 shoeboxes, which was more than the previous year’s goal, and this year’s goal for the county would be an increase of about 12 percent.

She provided some additional statistics and facts about the shoebox gifts, noting that 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.

More than 11.3 million shoebox gifts were collected in 2023 and this year Operation Christmas Child hopes to raise enough to reach 12 million children.

None of the boxes remain in the United States, Edenburn said, noting that it is a ministry that “reaches the ends of the earth with the gospel.”

The first connection to Salisbury Academy, through a member of the student relations team, happened last year, Edenburn said, and Campbell was the one who was so excited to pack boxes and set this big goal this year and teach her class to help, and ‘Now you see how it has grown.’

Campbell has worked hard to raise the money needed to purchase the supplies to pack the boxes, including making and selling jewelry.

She said she attended a jewelry camp two years ago and learned to make all kinds of jewelry. She decided to use this skill to help her raise money and started making earrings and bracelets.

“So I made four grand, I think,” Campbell said, “and that’s how it started.”

She has also sold snacks at a 5K event in Charlotte, worked at the farmers market, attended craft shows at multiple churches and sold items online.

On weekends she went to the store where she filled up her mother’s car with gas and took the stuff home to pack boxes.

Currently, they have packed 400 to 450 boxes of what she purchased, with more items and a donation to help her continue packing additional items.

At the packing party, classmates came to Campbell’s house and brought additional items as part of the class’s “Giving Party” donations, which were packed up, and at the end of the event an additional 94 boxes were ready to go to add to Campbell’s count.

When the junior preschool and kindergarten students from Salisbury Academy arrived, they had lunch and then were divided into three groups, with one group packing boxes, a second making cards to put in the boxes and a third decorating cookies for snacks.

The groups alternated throughout the afternoon until each student had the opportunity to participate in each activity.

Several other teachers and volunteers helped supervise the groups, while Campbell helped the children pack, giving everyone help and encouragement as she showed them how to organize the items and possibly put one or more items in the box could fit.

She first gave advice on how to pack, telling them to imagine that they had no toys and that “someone spent time at Christmas and gave you this box.” Think about what you would want if you didn’t have toys.”

They were instructed to ensure that the boxes were truly special for those who would receive them and that they were full.

The children then walked around the room carefully making their selections as they collected a stuffed animal or other larger toy, and then some craft supplies were added, smaller toys and toothbrushes, soap, socks and more items went into the boxes. until they were filled and closed, the correct label was checked, and the box was added to the completed stack and ready to go to a central delivery location and then to the processing center, and in time into the hands of a child somewhere in the neighborhood. world.

Campbell said her favorite items are the stuffed animals or the little animals that squeak, “and I think kids will really love them.”

And when the kids receive these boxes and they are opened, she hopes they will enjoy the “cool big items” and say “wow.” That’s why they are also called ‘wow items’ and they will ‘just play with them and enjoy’. it,” she said.

Edenburn said she loved seeing the excitement of Campbell and the children as they packed up.

“She brought it all together, she was the one who raised the money, bought the supplies and to be able to share the joy of it with all these classmates is just really special. I love it,” she said.

And Campbell was grateful for the classmates who came to help her fill the dump truck.

“They came especially for me,” she said. And added that “it means a lot to me because I couldn’t possibly do this alone. It’s just so amazing.”

Edenburn looked at all the children and said it was a blessing to have them participate in this outreach, but, she said, “it’s really a way to teach your children at a young age to give back.”

And the children also enjoyed it when Campbell asked Collin, one of the little ones who helped, if he liked packing the boxes and he said yes, and when asked what he liked about it he was agree with Campell who said it was good because it was. “going to children in need.”