Allison Jacobs filled it, her dad blessed it and June and Marty Delp dropped it off Monday at South Canyon Baptist Church, along with 106 other Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes from Westminster Presbyterian Church.

Allison’s gift-filled shoebox is just one of about 4,100 that Operation Christmas Child coordinator Dick Horak hopes will be on their way from western South Dakota to a distribution center in Minneapolis next week.

Billed as the world’s largest Christmas project, Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Franklin Graham’s Samaritan Purse, has sent more than 69 million shoeboxes filled with small toys, candy, clothes, coloring books, crayons and other items to needy children in more than 130 countries since it began in 1993.

Last year, 3,693 shoeboxes were shipped from the Rapid City collection site, and Horak is hoping to top that this year.

Westminster’s contribution of more than 100 boxes is a good start, said June Delp, who organized the church’s shoebox effort with Shirley McDougall.

“We’re a small church with about 300 members, so more than 100 boxes was an awesome response,” Delp said.

A MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers) group that meets at the church also contributed to the effort, she said. On Sunday at Westminster, children from the congregation brought all the boxes forward to be dedicated by the Rev. Bob Jacobs, the church’s pastor and Allison’s dad.

“We said a short prayer of blessing over them,” Jacobs said. “We prayed for the people who would receive them, that it would be a tangible illustration of God’s love for them and that God would help us become people who love others.”

Monday was the first day to drop the boxes off at collection centers during National Collection Week nationwide. The central site for western South Dakota is at South Canyon Baptist, 3333 W. Chicago St. Drop-off sites at churches in Spearfish, Custer, Pierre, Belle Fourche, Kadoka and Gillette, Wyo., will funnel more boxes to Rapid City all week.

Next Monday, a semitrailer of boxes will be on its way to a distribution center in Minneapolis for routing to far-flung places across the globe. Horak said shoeboxes from the upper Midwest region are destined for the following countries: Macedonia, Malawi, Mauritius, Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic and Honduras, as well as Abkhazia, which has seceded from Georgia.

Recipients of the boxes also get a children’s version of the Christian Gospel called “The Greatest Gift of All.” The boxes also are distributed in some predominantly Muslim countries, but those countries aren’t identified because of sensitivity to Christian evangelic efforts there, Horak said.

This year, Samaritan’s Purse has added a new feature that allows people to follow a box to its destination country.

By paying the $7 per box shipping cost online at www.samaritanspurse.org, Mary Jacobs said her daughter and son can track where their boxes go through a barcode number on the printable shipping label.

“We’re especially excited for that,” Jacobs said. “It’s a great mission project to involve children in.”