Once again friends of St Columba’s have been busy packing shoeboxes to send to children in poor countries for Christmas.

It is now 25 years since Operation Christmas Child has been run by Christian international relief charity, Samaritan’s Purse, and we celebrated in our morning service on Sunday 18 November with balloons.

Some one hundred and seventy-one shoeboxes were brought to church, filled with such items as hats and gloves, toothpaste and toothbrushes, toys, paper and pens, sweets and whistles.  We watched a couple of short videos showing shoeboxes being delivered to children in previous years, and our own children in Junior Church made a posters showing some of the places that shoeboxes would go.