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First Baptist Church in Morgan City is participating in its annual Operation Christmas Child collection, a program run by Samaritan’s Purse that aims to spread the Gospel and teach children in impoverished countries about Jesus.
The program involves filling a shoebox with hygiene items, school supplies, toys and some type of clothing.
While some children may receive the shipment at Christmas time, the shipments from various Samaritan Purse distribution centers are “staggered” throughout the year, Joycelyn Slaton, church relations coordinator at First Baptist Church, said Monday.
The goal is more the symbolic message than the contents in the box, she said.
“The main thing is each shoebox opens a door to present the Gospel,” Slaton said. “That’s its purpose. It’s not to say give this child the best toy you can find. It’s to excite them and get them involved in people loving them, that there are people somewhere who love them and God loves them.”
As of Monday afternoon, the church had gathered more than 1,500 shoeboxes. Of those, 525 came from their church, while a local family, alone, donated 805. Slaton said a year ago, the same family packed just over 1,000 boxes.
“We’ve been packing shoeboxes for approximately 20 years,” she said of the church. “We’ve been a collection center for 15 years.”
Anyone interested in the program can begin bringing their boxes to the church’s fellowship hall Monday and can continue until Nov. 23. The boxes can be delivered from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. each day of operation where they will be received by someone at the church in a curbside drop off.
While any shoebox can be used, some people use plastic shoe box-type containers.
“In the past, they’ve encouraged that, if possible, because they can use the shoe boxes to go down to the stream and get water,” Slaton said. “They can use these boxes in the villages, but it’s certainly not a required thing.”
Those participating in the program are asked to include a $9 donation inside the box to cover its costs.
Slaton said if someone wants to purchase a bag of items for the church to fill boxes with or to make a monetary donation, those are acceptable, too. She said checks should be made out to First Baptist Church with the notation that it is for the Operation Christmas Child Program.
Last year, the church collected 4,861 shoeboxes, including 3,311 from the Morgan City area. The remainder came from other sites in Houma and Thibodaux where boxes were collected and brought to the Morgan City collection center.
After the boxes’ contents are checked in Morgan City to ensure they meet the proper criteria, they will be shipped to one of Samaritan Purse’s main distribution centers where they will be checked again. Then, they will be shipped to one of numerous countries worldwide.
The program is available to children, ages 2-14, and each child will receive one box in their lifetime.
Slaton said the church has had visitors who received the boxes as children talk about their impact.
“Things we wouldn’t think about as being special, to them means a world of difference,” she said after explaining how some of the items, such as a washcloth or a lighted yo-yo, are things that recipients recalled that they remembered the most.
The children who receive the box are offered the opportunity to participate in a 12-lesson program called “The Greatest Journey.”
“It teaches them about salvation and receiving Christ in their heart,” Slaton said.

Do you feel the polls conducted before the presidential election were a) a sinister plot by an anti-Trump cabal b) a sinister plot by an anti-Biden cabal or c) irrelevant going forward because the polls were so far off you’ll never believe a poll again?
The race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was close. The polls were not close to accurate. And that has implications that go even beyond picking the person who gets the nuclear codes.
Statistical sampling in one form or another has a role to play in the products that get made, how they’re packaged and marketed, figuring out how the economy is doing, determining what stores will be opened in what locations, and a thousand other aspects of our collective and individual lives.
When it came to the biggest polling challenge of them all, the presidential race, the pros let us down.
They got a bad rap in 2016, when the consensus was that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump. Trump won, but the polls weren’t that far off.
The Real Clear Politics website lists more than 30 national polls conducted just before the 2016 election. The median edge for Clinton was a shade over two points, and that’s about the amount by which she won the popular vote.
The state polls weren’t as close, but even there, many of them showed races within the margin of error, especially in key states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. TV talking heads couldn’t resist anointing Clinton as the leader based on an advantage smaller than the margin of error.
You can’t do that. That’s what margin of error means.
This year? Holy moly.
In Pennsylvania, for example, Biden had a lead of about 48,000 votes, or 7/10ths of a point, as of Tuesday. On Nov. 2, the day before the election, NBC had Biden up by five points. CNBC had him up by four. Monmouth said Biden led by seven.
Even Trafalgar, the generally conservative organization that got credit for being more accurate than the mainstream guys Nov. 3, had Trump winning by two.
Quinnipiac had Biden winning by five and Reuters/Ipsos by four in Florida, the president’s biggest swing state victory. Trafalgar did better, saying Trump was ahead by five.
In a reverse of 2016, the national polls were off by bigger margins. Quinnipiac, for instance, picked Biden by 11 points, and the Economist/YouGov poll had Biden ahead by 10.
The actual Biden victory margin, if it turns out to be a victory margin, is about three points.
So what happened?
Looking at the basics of polling might offer some clues. For the poll’s results to be accurate, everyone in the group being represented has to have an equal chance of being questioned. Only a tiny group will be sampled, but the respondents have to be chosen at random.
A lack of true randomness may have been responsible for American history’s other big polling blunder, the 1948 presidential election. Polling made Republican Thomas Dewey the odds-on favorite over incumbent Harry S. Truman. But Truman won.
The polls were largely conducted by telephone. Who didn’t have phones in their homes in 1948? Blue-collar people, farmers, other rural people, especially rural southern people, recent immigrants and minorities.
That was the Democratic base. Truman’s support was underreported.
Assuming the sampling is right, the margin of error is calculated by dividing 1 by the square root of the sample size. In English, that means about 1,000 respondents are needed to get the margin of error down to a respectable plus-or-minus 3%.
All of that depends on the questions being worded equitably. It also depends on accurate answers from the respondents.
This year, pollsters talked about the “shy Trump voter.” This was supposed to be a group of respondents who, for whatever reason, didn’t want to tell pollsters that they supported the president. We saw the same sort of thing in 1990, when David Duke outperformed the polls in an unsuccessful bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston.
That doesn’t mean the president is David Duke. It means that some respondents may feel some pressure to give the pollsters the answer they think the pollsters are looking for.
It may also be that, because pollsters are part of the established political order and President Trump never has been, polls were consciously or unconsciously slanted against him.
Or there may be something about the nation’s shift from landlines to cellphones that statistical science has yet to come to terms with. Maybe people are declining pollster calls because they don’t want an auto warranty, and maybe that group is more inclined to support one candidate than another.
The danger is that voters will stay home because they think their candidate has the race in the bag or is so far behind that casting a ballot is hopeless.
But until political types figure out what happened in 2020, it’s probably safer just to go ahead and vote.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.

Bayou Horseshoe Pitchers Association
Fall League
Week 8
..........................W L
She’s Back........48 24
Need Ringers....39 33
Four Guys........30.5 41.5
Ringer Time.....26.5 45.5
High scratch point average: (30’) Tim Gilmore 80.4, Pat Pertuit 61.4 and Angela Percle 56.0; and (40’) Dale Pearce 48.6, Clyde Landry 47.0 and Dwain Arceneaux 45.9.
High individual ringer percentage: (30’) Gilmore 61.1, Pertuit 37.9 and Percle 36; and (40’) Arceneaux 27.6, Pearce 27.5 and Glenn Miller 26.0.
High scratch game: (30’) Gilmore 93, Pertuit 75 and Percle 69; and (40’) Landry 65, Pearce 64 and Arceneaux 63.
High handicap game: Pearce 106, Landry 105, Miller 104, Travis Bourdier 102, Bryan Phenix 102 and Gilmore 102.
Most ringers: (one night) Gilmore 84, Percle 58 and Pertuit 55; and (one game) Gilmore 30, Pertuit 23, Percle 20, Landry 18 and Miller 17.
Most points one night: Gilmore 262, Pertuit 204, Percle 203, Pearce 175 and Arceneaux 166.
High game over average: Pearce 20.9 and Percle 9.3.
Best won-loss record: Gilmore 14-4, Pearce 14-7, Calvin Johnson 10-5, Phenix 8-4, Giroir 11-7 and Percle 11-7.
Most points one night (team): She’s Back 639 and Need Ringers 484; and most ringers one night (team): She’s Back 168 and Need Ringers 111.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 1 p.m. on Thursday, November 12, 2020, in the Delhomme Chapel of the Flowers for Virgil Masters Skinner, 87, who passed away on Monday, November 9, 2020.
Reverend Gil Dutel will serve as Celebrant of the Mass and will conduct the funeral services.
Burial will take place in Fountain Memorial Cemetery.
Virgil, a resident of Scott, was the son of the late Barney Skinner and the former Theresa Masters Skinner.
He is survived by five children, Virgil M. Skinner Jr. (Jody), George D. Skinner (Mary), Timothy L. Skinner (Denice), Deborah Terro (Mike), and Annette Trahan (David); one sister, Joyce Orlando; his brother-in-law, Leighton Dashiell (Toni Anne); his sister-in-law, Cynthia Brittan; his wife, Pauline LeBlanc Skinner; his grandchildren, Elizabeth Skinner, Rachel Brunt, Paige DeClouet, Rebecca Fitter, Angel Kay Johnson, Courtney Cavazos, Benjamin Skinner, Katherine Lance, David Sonnier; and 14 great-grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 59 years, Patricia Dashiell Skinner; two grandchildren, Joshua and Melanie Smith; and his brother, Gerald Skinner.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Delhomme Funeral Home - Bertrand on Thursday, November 12, 2020, from 10 a.m. until time of service. A Rosary will be recited at 11 a.m. in the funeral home.
Personal condolences may be sent to the Skinner family at www.delhommefuneralhome.com.
Delhomme Funeral Home, 1011 Bertrand Drive, Lafayette, LA is in charge of funeral arrangements.