Way to go, Pagosa Springs. In September, Linda George, Archuleta County’s Operation Christmas Child (OCC) coordinator, set a goal of filling 3,000 red and green shoe box gifts for the world’s largest annual Christmas project of Samaritan’s Purse.
It has been an ongoing project of Pagosa for the last 15 years and gets bigger every year.
Our little town got busy promoting the shoe boxes in several stores, churches and groups. The drop-off center at Grace In Pagosa was a busy place Nov. 18 through 25 with 30 volunteers unloading, packing, counting and filling large cartons for shipping.
On Monday, Nov. 25, a 26-foot truck donated by a generous business owner was loaded to capacity and headed to Denver Processing Center in preparation for flight. Soon our 3,074 boxes packed with toys, clothes, toiletries, school supplies, and even personal notes and photos will be on their way to bless needy children around the world and hurricane victims in the southeast this Christmas.
When the numbers came in for all Four Corners, Pagosa Springs rocked the charts again. Aztec filled 906, Bayfield filled 637, Cortez filled 855, Durango filled 2,531, Farmington filled 994 and Pagosa filled 3,074. The Four Corners collected a total of 8,997 boxes of love for needy children.
A big thank you goes to Rotary Club and eight business owners that had displays for customers to pick up shoe boxes at their location.
Six youth groups in Pagosa filled the red and green boxes, too. They were Colorado Kids, Shady Pines, Rocky Mountain Riders, Wolf Creek Wonders and Hot Shots from 4-H, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the high school and middle school, as well as Future Farmers of America.
Several churches in our little mountain town brought hundreds of boxes to our drop-off center on Park Avenue. They were Calvary Home Fellowship, Centerpoint, Community United Methodist, Grace in Pagosa, Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church, Open Door, Our Savior Lutheran, Restoration, Pagosa Baptist Church and St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church. Thank you for bringing joy to the world this Christmas and making a difference.
We hope that you will be part of the world’s largest Christmas project next year with OCC. To find out more, go to samaritaupurse.org/OCC.
