The spirit of giving this holiday season is alive and well in one Walker County congregation.

Catlett Community Church in eastern Walker County has, for the third year in a row, been busying itself making and packing shoeboxes full of toys and good cheer for disadvantaged children in need throughout the world. As part of the Operation Christmas Child project, the church in the past two years combined sent a total of 125 Christmas boxes to the mission. This year, it hoped to increase its production, setting a goal of 100 boxes for a single year, higher than its previous years’ totals of 42 and 73, respectively.

However, through some frenzy of Christmas spirit, the children and adults at Catlett Community Church outdid themselves, completing a total of 225 boxes, more than double their goal, to be sent to children in need.

Rebecca Losh, Operation Christmas Child coordinator for Catlett Community Church, is thrilled. As in previous years she’s received thank-you letters from children who received the boxes. She is eagerly anticipating the arrival of a veritable snow of letters from this year’s batch of boxes.

The 225 colorful and lovingly-filled boxes were all loaded onto trucks and taken to be shipped off at a donation drop-off center in nearby East Ridge, Tenn. By now they are, hopefully, on their way to some little boy or girl half-way around the world.