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Musser sees ministry's gifts transform lives
Saturday, December 26, 2009
By Wendy B. Lynn Staff Writer
Thirty-one people, 37 churches, a business, a school, a Scout troop and 1,902 gift-filled shoeboxes - all part of 8.2 million shoeboxes to be distributed to children in more than 100 nations.
This is Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan's Purse. Every year the ministry collects thousands of shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies, clothing and more, and then gives those boxes to the poorest of poor children in countries either war-torn, ravaged by famine or natural disaster, or simply of the third world. Most of these children have never been given a gift for any reason.
Several years ago, a local woman unexpectedly found herself becoming involved in this ministry and, looking back, she can see the hand of God throughout her involvement and credits God with how it has grown in the Clearfield area.
At the beginning of the decade Janis Musser and her husband, Bob, were on their way home from the Greater Vision Homecoming, a southern gospel event in Tennessee. Musser said she realized they would be passing fairly close to Boone, N.C., and suggested they take some extra time and visit the town where Samaritan's Purse is headquartered. After finding a hotel and getting directions, they found the location of Samaritan's Purse on the outskirts of town. They knocked on the door and were greeted by a worker there who found someone to give them a tour of the facility. She said it was very humble and unpretentious, they had thought there would be signs, but there weren't.
Samaritan's Purse is a ministry of Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, and works mainly as a relief organization, bringing supplies and help to war-torn and disaster-ridden areas of the world. The first part of the facility the Mussers were taken to was stocked with items for disaster relief: tarps, oxygen tanks, blankets, wheel chairs and so on.
The next room, however, was a processing center for Operation Christmas Child and several retired volunteers were hard at work.
While there is a great push for packages in November, the organization collects and processes the boxes year-round in Boone. Volunteers staff the center and the Musser's tour guide said they were going to process some more boxes in the morning and asked if they would like to help.
Musser says she was really impressed with the organization. Everything, she said, is bathed in prayer. "I really believe God has honored Samaritan's Purse because they're faithful to him." Before anything is done, it is prayed over, and prayer is part of every facet of every day. The boxes to be processed had arrived from another country and the team's job was to open each box, sort through them, take out anything that shouldn't be there, add anything if needed, then tape them shut and package them for shipment.
Not long after this experience, Musser's friend, Betty Brooks, sent her some information on OCC. In 2001 and 2002, Musser spearheaded a drive to pack shoeboxes in her church and 105 and 145 boxes respectively were collected. But she felt God was telling her that more could be done, and, at what she says was the prompting of the Holy Spirit when contacted by Samaritan's Purse, she contacted other churches in the area and asked them to get involved.
At the beginning of 2002 Musser had to have major surgery and, after six months of being off work she decided it was time to retire, just in time for the next step with OCC ... opening a relay center in Clearfield, at the Presbyterian Church, for the November collection week. Prior to that, the closest relay center had been in Brookville. Relay centers collect the boxes from other churches during National Collection Week, pack them in crates and send them to a bigger collection center where they are then shipped to one of the big processing centers set up for this national event. That year, the relay center collected more than 1,200 shoeboxes.
"It's definitely grown every year," Musser said.
Often Samaritan's Purse sends stories to the various relay center leaders about the impact the shoeboxes have on children around the world, and Musser has been collecting her own set of stories as well. One she shares is of a woman who said the booklet sent out that year pictured a box her son had packed. It was received by a boy in Mexico and had all of the same items they had packed. "I always knew the boxes go to children, it's a sound ministry, but it was exciting to see one," Musser said, adding that something like that makes the idea of a child receiving the gift more real.
Another story she relates is of Lejla Allison, who lived in war-torn Bosnia. The first year Samaritan's Purse collected and delivered boxes was in 1993, and all of those boxes, 28,000, went to Bosnia where no humanitarian aid had been able to get through. Allison was a child at the time and went to school one day to find a group of people passing out shoeboxes. She didn't understand why, she thought they were empty boxes, but when she opened her box she found a new pair of sneakers and knew there was a God. Since then, she met an employee of NATO and moved to the United States and learned about Operation Christmas Child where she participates by packing boxes of her own. Allison's story can be found on the Samaritan Purse Web site.
Another story Musser was told was by a woman who had helped give boxes in the Philippines. One volunteer handed a box to a boy, and it was filled with T-shirts. His mother began to cry and told the volunteer that she had four other sons and none of them had shirts.
Musser said it is important for a note and a picture to be included in each box, "It's important in their lives, someone sent this because they love Jesus," Musser said. The children, she added, live in orphanages, slums, war-torn countries, which are often gray and drab. The boxes bring color into their lives. "Our children are blessed," she said, referring to children of the United States.
The boxes are usually passed out to children via their local churches and often the boxes are able to go where traditional missionaries cannot.
A storybook is included in each box, written in the child's own language, that gives an overview of the Gospel. The children are also given the opportunity to participate in a discipleship program.
Last year, 1.3 million children graduated from the 10-week program offered in partnership with the International Bible Society. Since 1999, 12 million children in 66 countries have been part of that program. "Handing out shoeboxes is just the beginning," Musser said.
Last year Musser had the opportunity to visit one of the big processing centers in Charlotte, N.C., during the national collection drive. She has a scrapbook of her experience, which was coordinated by the organizer at Grace Lutheran Church in State College.
That church collects boxes from the various relay centers in the area and ships them to Charlotte via a Roadway truck. She said everyone is trained to do a specific job, including taking out inappropriate items, such as liquids or perishables, add items to partially full boxes, pack boxes into shipping crates and so on. The items removed are not thrown away but are given to other organizations. Musser said OCC is resourceful and reuses things, such as the shipping boxes.
Personally, Musser and her husband have tried to pack boxes for boys age 10-14 because they are the hardest to find boxes for. "I really encourage anyone who has interest to get involved," she said, adding that three new churches became involved this year in the Clearfield area. The children who receive boxes, she is told, often ask, "Who would do this for me?" It's an opportunity, Musser says, to show love to someone who may never receive it.
Musser says opening the relay center and becoming involved with Operation Christmas Child has all been done under the direction of God, that she couldn't have done it herself. "The ministry is in God's hands," she said. "I'm just a coordinator, it's part of my gifts. But I couldn't do it on my own." There are many people she is thankful for, including Joel Peterson of Clearfield Wholesale Paper, who donates a truck and driver, Rich Aughenbaugh, every year to take the packages from Clearfield to State College.
Due to various events in the past year, Musser is looking for a new home for the relay center in the Clearfield area. She isn't worried, though. She says the ministry isn't hers, but is God's and trusts that he will find a new place soon.
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