When Argolida Kela was nine years old, she received a box that changed her life.

It was one of several shoebox-sized boxes filled with small personal items and gifts handed out by the Emanuel Center Church where Kela grew up, in the Republic of Kosovo. The box was part of Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child.

“I remember that day very clearly,” Kela wrote in an email to the Bigfork Eagle. “This is one of the moments that truly impacted my life, and I still have things from that box that I have been saving.”

Operation Christmas Child is one of many services that Samaritan’s Purse provides to help aid people in over 130 countries. The shoebox-sized boxes are donated to Samaritan’s Purse filled with personal items and/or small gifts for children in need. Samaritan’s Purse is an international organization that has operated an OCC donation center in the Flathead Valley for the last 10 years.

Kela is now 21 and although she is back in Kosovo, Kela attended the School of Biblical Studies at Youth With a Mission in Lakeside last year. Kela said she had a chance to put together a box for Operation Christmas Child while she was in Lakeside. “I did it knowing that through that box someone will experience joy and love. That box will be something that will give him hope,” Kela wrote. “It will be my pleasure to spend the last penny I have to make a Christmas box.”

The box Kela packed last year was one of over 3,700 boxes donated to children in need by Flathead Valley residents. OCC Volunteer Jennifer Bach said this year’s goal for the Flathead is to get 5,000 shoeboxes doanated.

Bach helped set up a relay center in Bigfork this year. It will be a drop-off location for communities south and east of Bigfork at the First Baptist Church. The shoeboxes will then be picked up and taken to the main distribution center in Kalispell.

Another thing Bach helped organize for this year is the addition of drop-off locations in Bigfork for individual items that go in the boxes. If someone doesn’t have time or enough items to pack one of the OCC shoeboxes, but still wants to help out, they can drop items off at the Montana Athletic Club, Bigfork Drug, Rocky Mountain Bank, the UPS Store, Flathead Bank or Glacier Bank.

Those donations will be collected by Bigfork Young Life and Boy Scout Troop 4923, who will be putting them in OCC shoeboxes on Nov. 15. National Collection Week for the boxes is Nov. 12-19. Information about how to pack a box, drop-off center locations and operating hours can be found online at www.samaritanspurse.org/index.php/OCC.

Bach has packed and donated boxes for OCC over the last four years. She said she volunteered to help coordinate drop-off locations this year because she thought it was important to get Bigfork more involved with donating to the program.

“Honestly, we are so blessed and if I can give that simple gift that will make such a huge difference, I want to be a part of that and I want to teach my kids that,” Bach said. “I want to encourage others to be a part of that too.”