by Glenda Wiliams, BNc correspondent

GENEVA, AL (BNc) — Joy Galloway, Kellee Jackson, Maggie Moyer and Wanda Cannon worked all year buying items to be packed and shipped to Panama for the 2010 Operation Christmas Joy project. This year’s backpacks were filled for the school in Santa Fe Darien as well as collected teaching supplies for teachers. 206 backpacks, 71 teacher bags, shoeboxes filled with gifts, medical supplies and other items were packed and shipped from the Geneva church building.

Backpacks were stuffed tightly with school supplies, hygiene items, clothes, toys, candy, and about anything a child living in poverty could ever imagine. Hand gardening tools and packets of seed were included for the parents to grow something to help feed their family. A Spanish New Testament was included in each backpack and teacher’s bag along with a history of Jesus book. The gifts were shipped to the Panama Missions warehouse in Montgomery. 

The 2010 Operation Christmas Joy shipment to Panama was loaded on Friday, October 29, at the Panama Missions’ warehouse in Montgomery and taken to Savannah, GA where it was to be loaded onto an open ship to be transported to Panama.

In early December a group from different parts of the country will arrive in Panama to help distribute joy all over Panama. Calculations were 4,317 shoebox gifts and 1,725 gift bags, plus many dresses, other new and used clothing, Bibles, songbooks, custom cabinets and supplies for clinic and more were in the shipment.

Larry Brady, Director of Panama Missions said, “This is what Christians do. We serve others.” For more information visit www.panamamissions.org.