Butler County’s Operation Christmas Child breaks box records
Of the 12.2 million gift-filled shoeboxes shipped to children around the world in December, 12,576 came from Butler County.
Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse, organizes a drive each year for shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies and hygiene items to send to children in underprivileged nations. Churches around the world organize their own drives for Operation Christmas Child, and Bibles are included in every shoebox that is distributed.
Rege Judy, coordinator of Operation Christmas Child at Community Alliance Church, Butler and Armstrong counties’ main collection site, said the 12,576 boxes that came from people in the area is the most the church has ever collected. Of those boxes, 12,257 were brought to Butler County churches that were part of the collection, and 319 were paid for online through Operation Christmas Child’s Build-a-Shoebox.
While 2025’s collection surpassed the 11,665 shoeboxes collected in 2024, Judy said the county and all of Pennsylvania are typically generous when it comes to loading boxes for the international effort.
“Pennsylvania is with the New Jersey state and together ours has been the largest collection area in the country,” Judy said. “It was awesome, it was really good. We are thankful for the opportunity to do it.”
A Jan. 22 news release from Samaritan’s Purse said Operation Christmas Child collected 10.9 million shoebox gifts in the U.S. Combined with international partners of the organization, the project will send 12.2 million shoebox gifts to children worldwide, including those impacted by Hurricane Melissa, a category five storm that recently struck Jamaica.
Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has collected and delivered more than 244 million gift-filled shoeboxes to children in more than 170 countries and territories, the news release said.
Eight churches in Butler and Armstrong counties are part of the effort, all collecting shoeboxes filled with supplies to distribute through Operation Christmas Child through October each year. In November, all the boxes are taken to Community Alliance Church, where they are loaded onto trucks and taken to Baltimore, Md., to be shipped to children overseas.
According to Judy, some of these boxes won’t reach their destination until months after Christmas — some as late as the summer — but the items inside may be the only material possessions children receive.
“We are happy children around the world are going to hear the gospel and have something material,” Judy said.
