Saskatchewan mother-daughter travel 8 hours to inspect shoeboxes

Kathy Fast is as close to a professional shoebox packer as they come.

Having spent much of her life packing shoeboxes and the past 20 years or so travelling to Calgary to help Samaritan’s Purse by inspecting collected boxes, it’s safe to say Fast understands the ins and outs of Operation Christmas Child.

“That’s something that we look forward to all year,” she said. “It’s always a really nice time.”

In the past, Fast has rented a van and taken a team from her church in Saskatoon to Calgary to volunteer. She couldn’t travel last year, with COVID-19 and restrictions in place, so this year she was more eager than ever to volunteer. Fast and her daughter flew down for a packed 2 1/2 days of volunteer shifts with the organization.

Each year, Samaritan’s Purse organizes its annual Christmas initiative, Operation Christmas Child (OCC), where individuals, families, churches, businesses, sports teams and friends pack shoeboxes for children in need around the world. The shoeboxes contain toys, clothes, school supplies and hygiene items and can be the first gift a child will receive in their life.

More than 373,000 shoeboxes from Canada were shared with children in West Africa and Central America as a result of the 2020 campaign. Since 1993, OCC has collected and distributed more than 187 million boxes in more than 100 countries.

Fast has devoted about two decades of her time and energy to the initiative because it’s something she believes in.

“I have personally seen the impact of a shoebox,” Fast shared.

A few years ago, while volunteering at the processing centre with that year’s collection of boxes, Fast was approached by Samaritan’s Purse about participating in a distribution trip. The trip would give Fast the chance to travel and hand out the boxes she was inspecting to the kids they were made for.

Children receive Canadian-packed shoeboxes from Operation Christmas Child in 2021. (Samaritan’s Purse/Submitted)

She and her daughter took the opportunity and the next year travelled with a group from the organization to Nicaragua.

“We actually got to see firsthand the joy that that box can bring to children. It’s a simple shoebox packed with school supplies, hygiene items, maybe a toy, a t-shirt, a ball … and for a lot of the kids, they’ve never received a gift before, and for us, that’s unimaginable,” she said.

“We met a young man who received a shoebox as a child and he was now a pastor.”

The communities OCC partners with collaborate with local churches to arrange shoebox distributions at those churches, as well as known community areas like daycares and schools.

“The child does not have to do anything to receive a box, there are no strings attached,” Fast explained.

The reaction of the kids to the boxes was one Fast will never forget.

“Oh they were so excited, they were just so excited,” she said fondly.

Boxes would be given out so every child had one, and the group would gather and open their presents together at the end of a countdown.

“Some just sat there, they didn’t want to open it. They wanted to wait and open it with their families,” Fast recalled. “Some children had their moms there, so it was nice to see what they were excited about.”

Seeing how the kids who received a box reacted to it also gave Fast insight into how to better pack her own boxes, including personalized letters and photos of the family who packed the box. These were devoured by children and interpreters on hand were very much in demand to read the simple letters that came with some of the boxes.

“They got so excited about a letter and there’d be interpreters there that would read the letter. It just made them feel like ‘Someone who doesn’t even know me cares about me enough to pack a box and send it to me,’ ” Fast said.

After that trip, Fast also started sewing and including her own reusable shopping bags, because often kids would be so excited to open their box that in the flurry of unwrapping, boxes would be destroyed. For children who travelled sometimes many kilometres to receive the box, they would have nothing to take their precious items home in.

Reusable shopping bags are also a practical tool for day to day to include, like sewing or fishing kits that some people will pack for older girl and boy boxes. Fast also suggests people pack a simple deflated soccer ball with a pump in boxes for any child.

“That simple shoebox can change lives,” Fast said. “That’s something that we’ll treasure forever. That was a really good experience.”

Though shoeboxes for OCC are collected during the holiday season, Fast and Frank King, news media relations manager for Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, said those boxes are often distributed throughout the year on various trips, not necessarily to do with Christmas.

“We’ve never promised to get boxes to anyone by Christmas simply because it’s just not possible in terms of the timelines and getting things transported, getting things through customs,” King explained.

However, with November and December associated with a season of giving, both agree it’s a perfect time for people to come together to collect joy for kids across the world.

“(It was) definitely a life-changing experience to sort of follow those shoeboxes because I pack boxes and go to help with the processing in Calgary … That inspires me every year,” Fast said.

“You recognize how much need there is.”

King said the children who receive a shoebox can live in the barest of shelters and take joy in the simplest of things, like soap or a sports jersey. Most importantly, the gift of a shoebox offers hope.

“Hope that they have not been forgotten, hope that God has not forgotten them and a fascinating hope that there are people that they’re probably never going to meet in a country that they may have never even heard of that’s packed all this stuff in a box just for them,” King shared.

Fast said there’s also a realization she has now of how much need there is in the world and of the privilege many living in Canada have.

This year, Fast and her daughter packed a combined 63 boxes themselves. When they flew to Calgary to help out with processing, it was a different experience than they were used to, thanks to COVID protocols.

Fast said fewer people were allowed at each processing station, areas were more separated and mask use was mandatory. Snacks and drinks weren’t shared like the had been in the past for volunteers, and for their breaks throughout the day, volunteers actually had to leave the building while stations were sanitized.

When packing boxes, Fast says things like liquids or other items that can freeze or melt must be taken out. This is to prevent problems at customs and to keep the boxes intact during shipping, especially knowing that the shoeboxes, when in transit, can sit on a tarmac for a few days in any given climate.

Items associated with violence or war and used or well-loved items are also not allowed by Samaritan’s Purse. If such items are found, they’ll be removed from the boxes and replaced with something that still maintains the integrity of the box, Fast explained. Any removed items are then donated by the organization to a local charity.

Fast and King said it’s not too late to pack a box still this year, although it’ll have to be done online. This year, King said numbers and processing are a bit behind, largely because Samaritan’s Purse is still waiting on an estimated 30,000 boxes that have been delayed leaving B.C. due to the extreme weather.

“A simple shoebox can have an incredible gift … it can change a child’s life,” Fast said. “It not only affects the child, it affects their family and the community. It’s worth it. We see our own children, our own grandchildren, how much they value a simple gift.”

She said it’s a hands-on way to act out her faith for a child she may never meet.

“This is a much larger impact — it’s a way of showing, in a tangible way, God’s love to a child who may never have received a gift,” she said.