Opening Up Christmas Shoeboxes: What Do They Look Like On the Other Side?

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On March 11, 2018

In Operation Christmas Child, Poverty

I love the hearts of Americans when it comes to generosity at Christmas. I love that there are hundreds of thousands of people who take the time, the money, and the care to pick out special gifts for millions of needy children around the world. Operation Christmas Child (OCC) shoeboxes really encapsulate the kindness of Americans at Christmas. And for Christians, Hope. Because many people who fill shoeboxes every November are praying and hoping that the child who receives their box will also receive the gospel.

And that’s awesome.



I also recognize how important this ministry is to many American churches and families. It’s a great tradition to do with your kids. It’s fun. And the stories that Samaritan’s Purse produces are compelling. The OCC boxes are a great way for the ministry to raise money (and Samaritan’s Purse has some really great projects, including the new hospital at my beloved ELWA in Liberia).

I, too, loved the shoebox idea.

My first up-close-and-personal experience with Christmas shoeboxes came in 2005, just a couple years after we had moved to Tanzania. Gil and I had recently jumped in headfirst with doing youth ministry at Haven of Peace Academy. We decided that it would be good for our teens to visit an orphanage in December and bring Christmas shoeboxes for the kids.

So on one Saturday morning, all of our teens overloaded our kitchen table with bucketloads of soap, candy, pencils and other trinkets, and we filled over 100 containers with these gifts. Then we loaded up into vans and took off for the orphanage. Everyone was excited. We couldn’t wait to see the joy on the kids’ faces.

Shortly after arriving, the orphanage manager gave all of us a tour of the orphanage. Right away, I started to realize that maybe our shoebox idea wasn’t so great after all. The kids at the orphanage had no personal possessions. They all shared clothes. They shared beds. I realized they wouldn’t even have a place to keep the gifts we were giving them.

We played a bunch of games with the kids, and gave everyone cookies and punch. The boys played soccer and the girls painted nails, and there were lots of big smiles all around. Before we left, we sat all the kids down on mats and handed out the boxes. But the kids showed no excitement–no response at all. In fact, they didn’t even open the boxes until we did it for them. Then they just stared blandly at the gifts.

We didn’t take many pictures because there wasn’t any excitement.

One of the missionary moms who had helped chaperone this event pulled me aside. “We’ve done a lot of work at orphanages,” she told me. “The reason these kids aren’t excited is probably because they’ve never owned anything. Once we leave, this stuff will most likely be collected up by the managers. Some of it might be used by the kids, but most of it will probably be sold by the adults.”

She was right. We should have just stuck with the games and the snacks and not wasted our money on gifts. It was a hard, good lesson.

You could write that off as just one bad experience. We didn’t do it again, but at the time, I didn’t want to cast judgment on the OCC concept as a whole.

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As the years went on, I started to become more uneasy about OCC. I would see my American friends posting pictures on Facebook of the boxes they had so carefully and generously filled. On one hand, I was really proud of them for how they were showing love to the world’s children. But on the other hand, I started to think about the people in poverty I know personally.

I started thinking, I really hope the shoeboxes don’t get sent here.

I thought about how Christmas is celebrated in churches in Tanzania. Christmas is a day of joy, and everyone gets together for special food. But children receive new clothes on Christmas–not toys. Children aren’t sad that they didn’t get any toys, because they don’t expect them.

So I started to wonder: Do we want children to expect toys at Christmas? Has that tradition produced good fruit within our own culture? Is that a Christmas tradition that Americans want to export to the rest of the world?

I also started to wonder about how OCC boxes affect the local economy of the communities where they are sent. As you may have noticed from my story, we were able to fill 100 boxes with goodies that we purchased locally. Which makes me ask the question: If OCC boxes are really changing lives, is there really a need to ship these trinkets around the world? Couldn’t they be purchased and assembled locally and support local economies? Wouldn’t that be a better way to help those in poverty?

But the most important question I’ve had to ask myself is this:

What happens when the life-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ is associated with dollar-store trinkets from America?

Every year, Samaritan’s Purse puts out promotional videos and articles that share the impact of OCC distribution to churches and ministries around the world. This last Christmas, one of those videos got personal for us.

At the end of November, Samaritan’s Purse posted a video about a church planter in Tanzania who uses the shoeboxes to help him plant churches. The corresponding article is titled,“Operation Christmas Child Gifts Help Build the Church in Tanzania.” (I encourage you to watch/read it before you read on.)

We don’t know the man featured in this video and article. But we do know lots of Tanzanian church planters. So an (American) co-worker on our missionary team sent the link to a Tanzanian friend who is the leader of a growing, vibrant church planting movement all throughout Tanzania. Our co-worker asked him to watch the video and give his thoughts on it.

Here’s how this courageous Tanzanian church planter responded. This man is biblical, influential, and is highly respected by everyone who knows him. These are his exact words. 

“1) First, we don’t see in the Bible this model of ‘gift giving’ being used for disciple-making and planting churches.

2) The question I am asking myself is, ‘If the shoeboxes gift are removed will there still be church planting?’ I DOUBT IT! Then, this is not a church planting model.

3) I am also questioning about its reproducibility. Will the said ‘members’ of that church in Kitomondo do the church plant without the shoebox gifts? In my experience and stories I have heard, this model of mission outreach and church planting has never been effective, sustainable or reproducible. It has also produced a wrong view towards the Gospel, and causes other church planters who go to villages without gifts to be rejected or ridiculed.

4) This ‘attraction’ method of bringing people to the church has always given birth to ‘church members’ and not ‘true disciples’ of Jesus Christ.

5) I feel lots of damage is associated with this gift giving approach to missions, for it creates attachment to wrong things. Pastor Marco [from the video] says, ‘I just need shoeboxes.’ To me this is seriously dangerous. I deeply feel that WE NEED THE HOLY SPIRIT and only Him. While gifts may give us access to difficult places, they should not be the substitutes of the Holy Spirit. The gospel still needs to be presented in the power of the Holy Spirit. If it necessitates gifts to be given, they should be locally found and reproduced and not imported from America.

6) Our experience in reaching unreached peoples has taught us a lot on gift giving. In some places, we haven’t been well-received because the missionaries who went there before us presented gifts….and we have no gifts. When those missionaries left, their ‘converts’ also returned back to their old faith and were waiting for the next gift presenters.

My advice always to Western missionaries is not to come to Africa with their strategies, not even strategies they saw working elsewhere. They have to come empty-handed, with the Holy Spirit, live among the unreached peoples, learn from them, asking the Holy Spirit what he wants done in these places. Western missionaries working cross-culturally need to stop and learn first. Otherwise, they are making it hard for us (who cannot have the shoeboxes) to do mission work.”

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This church planter’s words hit me hard, and they are the main reason why I decided to write about this subject. It’s one thing for American missionaries to question the strategy of OCC shoeboxes, because we don’t always know what we are talking about. It’s a totally different story when a Tanzanian church planter asks Americans to reconsider the ways we are trying to help their ministries. I need to pay attention. All of us do.

Most likely there are some places in the world–perhaps areas that are already more westernized or developed–where OCC boxes might help more than hurt. But truthfully, don’t all of us–even those who minister in America–have something to learn from this Tanzanian church planter’s words?

Other overseas workers have written about similar concerns, including some that are up close and personal. I recently started a discussion about OCC (which turned quite lively!) on the Facebook page for A Life Overseas. Unfortunately, there were very few readers (who live internationally) who could point to any specific benefits they had seen from OCC.

Friends, remember that I am sharing this as one who had to learn this (and many other things) the hard way. Gil and I have made a lot of mistakes in this country that has so graciously put up with us. We are forever learning. I hope you’ll be willing to learn with us.

There’s lots of time to mull this over before next Christmas. And if you are wondering about alternatives, click here, here, or here. If you want to help your own kids become poverty fighters, click herefor some ideas. Please, don’t stop caring about spreading the gospel to the world’s children.

*Follow up post here: Sometimes the Starfish Story Doesn’t Work: Read about eye-witness Shoebox stories from around the world. And ask the question with me: Should we be satisfied with just reaching some when we could use our resources more strategically to reach many? 

Darkness, Prayer, and Entitlement

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On March 3, 2018

In Poverty

The power was out all day.

By the time we got home in the afternoon, our back-up battery system had been depleted. The generator was out of fuel. The air was stifling; the sweat trickled down my back even while standing still.

At bedtime, the kids started loudly complaining. It’s too hot to sleep without fans! But as I fumbled for a headlamp, I too was equally grumpy. The air was perfectly still and a sauna descended on the house. What do you want me to do about it? I hollered back. You’re just going to have to deal with it. Go stick your head in the shower and then go back to bed!

I’ve got such entitled kids, I grumbled to myself.

But then I prayed, Please make the power come back on. I don’t want to lose a night of sleep!

And I realized I have the same entitled attitude.

I thought of my friend who I had just talked to earlier that week. Her philandering husband had disappeared and stopped sending her money, leaving her alone to provide for the kids. She lives a couple miles away from me, in the same city with the same stifling March air. She has no indoor plumbing (she hauls water every day) or rarely the money for electricity. With tears in her eyes, she told me that she had no money for food. Only flour was in the house.

There’s no welfare here. Or food stamps. There’s no safety net.

I can’t imagine. The idea of going home and telling my children that I have no food to give them is utterly incomprehensible to me.

If we wanted to, Gil or I could have gone out that night in the dark and bought more fuel for the generator. If we wanted to, we could have run it all night. It’s expensive, but we could have afforded it. We just didn’t want the inconvenience.

So when I find myself praying for the power to come back on, I must question my view of God. Is he there to fulfill all my wishes? And if so, then what about my friend, with not only no generator or electricity, but also no running water and no food? She is praying to the same God as I.

I gave my friend some groceries and am helping her think of longer-term solutions. But life for her will most likely always be brutally hard, right on the edge between survival and extinction.

Up until recently, right next-door to Haven of Peace Academy was a rock quarry. All day long, trucks would bring in boulders, and dozens of people would spend all day pounding those boulders into gravel. All day, every day.

HOPAC’s soccer field is on the edge of campus, and often while watching my kids play their soccer matches–healthy, strong, well-educated and in their matching jerseys–the background noise would be the pounding of rocks.

I don’t mean to give a single-sided view of Tanzania, because as I’ve written before, not everyone is poor. And most certainly, those who do have so much less than me have a great deal to teach me. But every day, I live my comfortable, educated, charmed life right alongside those who wonder how they will feed their children.

And I wonder how then I should live. And how I should pray. And what will be revealed on that Day, when all the charm and comfort is stripped away, and when we are all shown to be who we really are.

The power came back on at 9:00 that night, and we all had a good night’s sleep. But it was the darkness which showed me my soul.

Grace is 12 and Lily is 9

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On March 3, 2018

In Other

I am waaay behind on these pictures, but considering both girls’ parties were late, and we managed to celebrate four birthdays for four kids in four months, I’m still pretty proud of us.

Grace had her party at the HOPAC pool with her class, and since her Daddy is the game-planner-extraordinaire, it was fabulous fun. Belly flop contests, floating watermelon races, and Shital’s red chicken for everyone.

Lily said she wanted a “movie party,” to which we said a whole-hearted AMEN….because what else is easier than a movie party? 

Why is ‘Work’ a Bad Word?

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On February 18, 2018

In Other

I love my work, and I don’t get paid. These memes make me realize I live an odd life.

For missionaries, salary has never been connected to quantity or type of work. In fact, we don’t technically receive a salary, but a stipend that comes from church donations. Since most of my adult life has been spent as a missionary, this is normal to me, but sometimes I remember that it’s actually rather odd.

Haven of Peace Academy, where I am now serving as elementary school principal, is an extremely high quality institution. I would argue that we offer the best education in Tanzania (admittedly I am biased!). We have almost 400 students (K-12), three full science labs, a 25-meter swimming pool, a huge new library, and just broke ground on a performing arts center.

HOPAC has 500 students on waiting lists. This week, I am in the process of giving assessments to children who want to start kindergarten in August. We have over 60 applications for a class of 23, and there would have been more, but we made December 31 the application deadline. Other schools similar to HOPAC have huge billboards around the city, but HOPAC never needs to do a speck of advertising.

But what’s odd about all of this is that HOPAC doesn’t pay most of their teachers. In fact, because it’s a non-profit school, it’s not legally allowed to pay anyone except Tanzanian citizens. Most of the teaching staff are missionaries. We get some help with housing, but no salary.

So that means that when I took this giant job, Gil and I knew that we would still be living on the same stipend as before. Our standard of living wouldn’t be increasing. But that wasn’t an issue, because our work here has never been connected to our salary.

Most of the staff I work with are living the same way. In fact, for couples where both spouses are on staff, it actually costs them to work at HOPAC, since two-parent working families tend to have more expenses. Even those teachers who are Tanzanian, and thus allowed to receive a salary, could be earning a lot more if they were working somewhere else.

So all of this begs the question, Why on earth are we doing this? Why did I apply for this position when salary wasn’t a part of it? Why are most of the teachers I supervise volunteering for this job?

It’s because mankind was created for work.

Work came before the Fall of Man, not after. Adam was given a job in the Garden. And there’s no reason to believe that in Heaven we’re going to sit around on clouds all day. We’ll be working. Indeed, the sweat and pressure of work is a result of sin, but not work itself.

True, many times we need to understand the value of rest–that’s another conversation. But often, we also need to understand the value of work.  And not just because work is how we eat and pay the mortgage, but the intrinsic value of work–even work we are not paid for.

I lean towards capitalism, so I understand the value of getting paid for a job well done. I know that for the vast majority of the world, if you want to eat, you need a salary. Volunteering usually is not an option. But there is something incredibly freeing about working in a job where salary isn’t connected to work, and it’s taught me a lot about work’s value.

Perhaps part of the reason why it was no big deal to take this position, knowing there was no salary, is because I’ve been working without a salary for years now. Isn’t that what a stay-at-home-mom does? Raising children, volunteering in ministry, creating a home–all of those things are most definitely work, but none receive a salary.

As Christians, should we be equating the value of work with the salary that goes with it? Or can we see work as God meant it to be?

Work is Redemption. Creating music, feeding children, sweeping the floor, caring for the sick, fixing the leaky pipe, plowing the field, cutting hair, coaching the team. All are ways that we redeem a broken world. All are a privilege.

Yet our culture communicates to us that the only purpose of work is to earn money. And that the real goal of life is to earn enough money so that we can entertain ourselves with vacations and Netflix and baseball games and retire as soon as possible.

So often we forget that we have been created for work. 

I think that embracing this is what makes HOPAC such an extraordinary place. Of course, on a very practical note, volunteer staff are what make HOPAC so affordable for so many families. It’s the reason why our fees are half to a third less than any other comparable school in Tanzania. But probably more important is that the staff knows that there is a greater purpose in what we are doing. None of us are in it for money, power, or position–because it’s just not there. We are called to love and serve Jesus–and that makes all of us incredibly devoted to our jobs and students.

I’m especially privileged right now because I get to do a job that I adore. Of course, sometimes work is drudgery, and I’ve been there too. But as Christ-followers who are corporately working together to redeem this world, should we try to do the least amount of work we can get away with? Should it always be about money? Can we instead see work as a way to use our talents, a way to serve others, and a way to bring redemption to the world?

Somebody needs to create a meme about that.

By the way, Haven of Peace Academy is recruiting!

When Did the Church Decide that the Best Way to Attract People is By Looking Perfect?

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On February 7, 2018

In Other

Am I the only one paranoid and cynical these days? Is every man an abuser? Is every church hiding something?

I think about my upbringing and I realize that I was one of the fortunate ones. My parents were emotionally and economically stable. They disciplined me (I was not an easy kid), but loved me and never went too far. They sheltered me but weren’t afraid to talk about hard things.

The various Christian communities I grew up in were full of warmth and affection. Hypocrisy was rare; I was never asked to keep secrets; I was never abused–not even close.

And I took it all for granted. I assumed that was the norm. Shocking stories were, well, shocking. In general, I believed that Christians and churches and mission organizations were morally upstanding and safe. Why shouldn’t I?

But like I said, I was one of the fortunate ones. The older I’ve gotten, the more I realize that the wholesome and moral picture-perfect life was just a veneer. That lurking beneath the surface of Good American Christianity was far more cancer than I ever understood.

For too many, this realization has caused them to abandon not just the Church, but Jesus as well. Should we be surprised? After the talks about purity rings and modest skirts, church leaders were grooming little girls. Families were taught to pull their children in tighter and tighter, shielding them from the evil out there, while failing to acknowledge the evil within. Bruised men and women were told to forgive and forget. And wickedness was covered up by manicured grass and hearty welcoming handshakes. Why are we surprised so many have left?

When did the Church decide that the best way to attract people is by looking perfect? It certainly didn’t come from Jesus, who got down in the dust with the adulteress, and chose the tax collector and the fisherman (not the rabbis) to be his disciples.

Some churches have tried to be more down-to-earth. The pastor ditches his suit for jeans and the music team brings in drums and huge “Come As You Are” signs are splashed across the entrance. But maybe the watching world isn’t so concerned about jeans and slick music and modern-looking buildings as much as they are about authenticity.

Authenticity is a popular word these days, so I am careful how I use it. I don’t believe that we should be saying, This is the real me, so deal with it. But I do believe we should be communicating, This is the real me, and that’s why I need Jesus. There’s a big difference.

What happens when the Church preaches forgiveness at the expense of justice? What happens when a church claims love and unity as values but all the faces and ages look the same? What happens when the vast majority of the church’s energy is expended only for the people inside its own walls? We can smile, offer free coffee in the foyer, and parade around our well-behaved children, but will we really be living out the gospel to a broken world?

We don’t want to recognize our wretchedness because of pride. We cover up sin to protect our reputations because of pride. And pride is the antithesis of the gospel! 

Why do we so often try to look perfect? Understanding the gospel must start by recognizing our depravity. If we’re already pretty good people, then what’s the purpose of grace? And why on earth then did Jesus need to suffer and die for us?

I’ve lived long enough now that scandals, even within the Church, no longer shock me. But I am consistently discouraged by the stories of churches covering them up. As Rachel Denhollander brilliantly said, “The gospel of Jesus Christ does not need your protection.”

You can lock up a few evil people, but you can’t lock up everyone. As the cancer in our churches continues to rise to the surface, let us not simply pull it out, but look at where it’s rooted in our own hearts.

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