This past November, Southeast Louisiana matched its remarkable outpouring of support for Operation Christmas Child from a year ago with another collection of more than 12,000 shoe boxes.

Operation Christmas Child (OCC) is an annual ministry of Samaritan’s Purse that sends Christmas gifts – packed into shoe box-sized packages – to millions of impoverished children around the world. In 2010 alone, Operation Christmas Child distributed close to 8.2 million shoe boxes for children across the globe.

The collection center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary led the way for the region, receiving 7,255 shoe boxes from relay centers throughout the metropolitan area during the OCC Nov. 14-21 collection week.

“It’s a big operation, but it’s so worth it,” said Kay Jensen, who directs the collection center at NOBTS. “It’s like being a little missionary.”

In an innovation for 2011, leaders of the NOBTS collection center this year set up a dedicated website with details about Operation Christmas Child, printable forms and box packing instructions, a volunteer calendar and instructions for helping at the center.

The NOBTS collection center welcomed a wide range of volunteers to make the collection week a success. Volunteers came from the surrounding community, along with students from the University of New Orleans, William Carey University nursing school and New Orleans Baptist Seminary.

“I listen to LifeSongs everyday,” said Nettie Alonzo, who lives in Gretna, La., referring to the NOBTS-based Christian radio station. “I volunteered last year, and I’m just happy to help out.”

And for the first time, the Greater New Orleans area featured a second major collection center in Bush, La., at Hebron Baptist Church. The Bush collection center added another 5,168 boxes, bringing the total regional collection to more than 12,400.

Hebron Baptist Church for the past few years had already been a de facto collection center, collecting a whopping 2,000 boxes in 2009 and more than 5,000 in 2010. But 2011 marked its first year as an official OCC collection center.

Bush leaders again took to social media and word-of-mouth to generate excitement and supplies for Operation Christmas Child. They managed a Facebook page to help spread the word about local sales and announce OCC-related events.

As in years past, Hebron Baptist Church hosted a series of “packing parties” and even held a ladies’ lock-in called “Box Around the Clock” where people from the community packed shoe boxes en masse.

A group from the Bush area was able to follow the boxes collected there all the way to the processing center in Atlanta, Ga., where final preparations were made for those boxes to be shipped to Ukraine.

From the Northshore to the Southshore of the New Orleans area, people banded together to make Operation Christmas Child a success in 2011. And that success hinged on the dedication of individuals passionate about the ministry – people like Bob Porter from Metairie, La.

Porter and his wife, Roberta, have been preparing Operation Christmas Child boxes for about a decade. Porter said he discovered OCC almost by accident.

“This was back 10 or 11 years ago. I was surfing the Internet at our house. I can’t tell you how I got there, but I clicked on a link that took me to the Samaritan’s Purse website,” Porter said.

After reading about Operation Christmas Child, Porter decided, “This just sounds too easy and like too much fun not to do it.”

He said that first year he and Roberta prepared just a hand full of boxes. But when they dropped the boxes off at the seminary and saw the dozens of other shoe boxes, they resolved to do more the following year.

“Ever since, we’ve been doing our best to put a good effort – it’s personal, it’s easy, it’s within our capabilities,” Porter said.

That “good effort,” Porter said, has translated to somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 boxes over the past 10 years. Each year, he and Roberta start with a personal goal of 200 boxes.

“And 200 boxes take up a lot of space,” he said.

The Porters buy materials for the boxes throughout the year whenever they see items on sale. They store the goods in closets or spare rooms. Friends and neighbors see the materials and ask what the Porters are doing. When they hear, they begin bringing materials to the Porters’ house. Porter said the act of buying goods for the boxes becomes a means of sharing about OCC.

“People at the register think I’m a wacko because who would need 50 toothbrushes?” he said, adding that buying the materials often affords him an opportunity to share the gospel.

“All year long, we’re collecting the fixings for the shoe boxes,” he said.

By the time October rolls around, the Porters begin to combine the evening meal with preparing shoe boxes for OCC.

Last year alone, the Porters accounted for 347 OCC boxes. They followed that up with an additional 280 in 2011.

“We’ve got our own collection center,” he said.