CEREAN DISTRIBUTES GIFT SHOEBOXES IN RWANDA
Harvest Presbyterian Church helps send Marlin Sena on Operation
Christmas Child distribution

Marlin Sena of Ceres presented a young boy at the Kigali Christian
Academy in Rwanda, Africa, a cap hand-knitted by Ceres resident Alice
Visser.

By Jeff Benziger, Editor
jbenziger@cerescourier.com
POSTED May 21, 2014 9:00 a.m.
Marlin Sena, a member of Harvest Presbyterian Church in Ceres, has
returned from Kigali, Rwanda, Africa, where he helped distribute
shoeboxes as part of Samaritan's Purses Operation Christmas Child
program.
"It is something that I'll take to the grave," said Sena, who left on
April 26 with 40 other OCC representatives and volunteers from across
the United States. The group broke up into three teams to made six
distributions of gifts to African children.
"We figure that we distributed over 700 ... at two churches and four
schools," said Sena.
The group sat in a class of children who were offered a 12-week
discipleship course called "the Greatest Journey series" to teach the
children about the biblical account of Creation.
Sena's group returned on May 4.
Many churches and schools in the Ceres area participate in this annual
holiday season collection of gifts to fill shoeboxes. A total of
22,708 shoeboxes filled with gifts were collected in 2013 from
Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
However, because of the monumental size of the collection - a total of
9.1 million boxes - the gifts are often not delivered in time for the
Christmas holiday.
"Like I tell people, this is not Santa Claus. Everything does not get
delivered on Christmas Eve."
At times cartons are held up in Customs and there are delays in
transporting them. Last week a group of Americans left for the
Philippines for a distribution there.
"It goes six to eight months into the year," said Sena.
The Ceres resident said he was impressed with the cleanliness of
Rwanda and how well-mannered, happy and loveable the children are.
"Hugs was a big thing there with the children."
He said he saw poverty - areas without running water or electricity -
but there was no evidence of a lack of food.
"A lot of these children have nothing. I mean, you see them playing
out in the dirt field or on the side of a hill and they're throwing
rocks or kicking a rock or something and that's their entertainment.
They're just as happy as can be, laughing and smiling and everything."
Sena said children were gathered and given boxes and signaled to open
them up all at one time.
"We were able to mingle with them and go through their boxes and if
there were items they weren't aware of what it is, showed them how to
use them," said Sena. "One fellow had a yo-yo and they'd never seen a
yo-yo before so we demonstrated how it worked. It was just
fascinating."
The Americans got an up-close and sobering look at the genocide
memorial where there was a mass burial site. An estimated 500,000 to
one million were killed within 100 days in 1994 when the Tutsi and
Hutu tribes conducted a killing rampage.
"These people really went through some torture and everything and some
families were totally wiped out. We talked to a couple of people who
actually went through that genocide and was able to escape and they
saw their families being killed."
Sena said the country is more united today and there is an effort to
indoctrinate the youngsters - who far outnumber adults - to live in
harmony.
Sena is one of three West Coast volunteers who were chosen to go, one
other being Becky Gross, the WC Regional Manager of OCC in Santa Ana.
Sena and his wife, Marilyn Sena, are year-round volunteers with OCC.
When he was selected to go to Africa, Harvest Presbyterian Church
collected a love gift to help him defray expenses.
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&hl=en-CA&u=http://beta.cerescourier.com/section/11/article/3374/&source=s&q=Cerean+distributes+gift+shoeboxes+in+Rwanda
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