Jan. 26, 2015

In December, NHS took a trip to Dallas to Samaritan’s Purse and helped with Operation Christmas Child. The group had a blast serving and spending time together. 

“I was excited for the opportunity to get to serve,” junior, Sophia Okada said. “I’ve done the Christmas boxes before, so it was just a fun thing to do. We had Christmas shoe boxes, with presents, and we had to sort and make sure there wasn’t anything that would have been flagged when they were being taken to the other countries, and we would take those out and replace them with a different type of toy.”

The students were very grateful for the opportunity of the trip. Mrs. Pratt had put much time and effort into planning the trip, and many students were excited to load up the van and go. 

“Previously, with our class, we went on the trip, and I really enjoyed it,” senior, Killian Makin said. “I liked spending time with people, and I liked the mission that we were able to go and serve, that’s one of the main reasons I was really excited for the opportunity to go.”

About halfway through the day, the organization had a moment of prayer and showed a video of kids receiving their gifts from previous years. 

“I think the video they showed was really neat,” Okada said. “Those kinds of things are always like, ‘Oh, woah, missions!’ and I would do that kind of thing. I just like seeing how it helps the kids and how much joy they get from it.”

Samaritan’s Purse is a brilliant organization, and every single person there was full of energy, ringing bells and cheering as cases of shoe boxes were filled. 

 “One thing that stood out to me was one of the men that was working at Operation Christmas Child,” Makin said. “He wasn’t in our group, or specifically helping us, but I saw him for about twenty seconds, and he was this crazy, on fire for God kind of dude, and it was just incredible. He was dressed as a box. He talked to me and asked what sport I played, and he was like ‘Oh, that’s cool, because I was never good enough at sports.’ But just to be able to see how on fire he was for Christ, it was really cool.”