The Parable Group announced the winning store of its Attend-a-Distribution-Trip-with-Operation-Christmas-Child contest. The winning store, Sounds of Light in Adrian, Mich., owned by Mary and Louis Schaap, will receive an all-expenses-paid, five-day trip to Barranquilla, Colombia, for two to distribute shoeboxes with Operation Christmas Child.

Applicant stores submitted photos and earned virtual tokens for their local OCC campaign. Virtual tokens could be earned for a variety of efforts, such as creating in-store displays, contacting churches, partnering with OCC area coordinators, ordering Hygiene-in-a-Bottle kits from Oodles World, posting on social media and hosting a shoebox-packing party. Sounds of Light was drawn Oct. 28 from a pool of more than 3,000 tokens.

“Operation Christmas Child is sharing the gospel with children all around the world, and we are thrilled that Mary and Louis will get to see first-hand what all those efforts look like in the eyes of children receiving shoeboxes,” said Nancy Randise, Parable’s marketing coordinator.

Travel will take place Jan. 27-31, 2014. The winners will hand out shoeboxes at several locations throughout Northern Colombia and will meet with Colombian churches and pastors to help with local outreach.

“We feel so blessed that God is allowing us to be a part of this trip!” said Mary Schaap, owner of Sounds of Light. “We’re so excited to get to experience the other end of this project and see kids actually receiving their boxes. Our upcoming trip is already allowing us to build more excitement and publicity for Operation Christmas Child since the local newspaper and radio are picking up our story. It even seems that some of our customers are even more motivated to pack a shoebox. We are praying for the hearts of the children we get to serve, and we hope you will all pray as well.”

Steve Potratz, founder and president of The Parable Group, said: “We are honored to be ministering alongside Operation Christmas Child to bring joy and the good news of Jesus’ love to children around the world. We’re extremely proud of every store’s local efforts promoting Operation Christmas Child.”

Operation Christmas Child, a project of the international Christian relief and evangelism organization Samaritan’s Purse, headed by Franklin Graham, is the world’s largest Christmas project. Since 1993, the project has hand-delivered more than 100 million shoebox gifts to needy children in more than 130 countries.

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