Time is running out to get those shoe boxes packed up for Operation Christmas Child.

Heather and Dave Meszaros went on a trip last spring to help hand out the boxes in Costa Rica with Samaritan's Purse.

She says it's something they've done for awhile.

"We have three children and as long as the shoe boxes have been around we've been doing the shoe boxes every year and we would pack the boxes and, yes I always wondered where the boxes went and how the kids got them, " she says. "We had an opportunity to see that first hand and it was a once in a lifetime experience to be sure."

She says they played games with the kids until they were called inside the school and the blankets were pulled off the boxes and each child was called up and then they waited for the big countdown and everyone opened theirs at the same time and that's when Meszaros says the chaos ensued.

She says each child will only get one box in their lifetime so it's important what's included in them.

"The number one thing that shocked me the most was what every single child, when they opened their box and they saw a toothbrush, the joy on their faces, and they would hold up these toothbrushes and wave them in the air," she says. "It really struck home to us how such a little thing can make such a huge difference in someone's life."

Meszaros says one of the translators saw the shoe boxes and it triggered a memory and she went home and asked her parents if she had ever received one and they said she had. She had received a stuffed cow in her shoe box when she was 5 or 6 and that cow had gone with her to university and she still has it.

Shoe boxes will be collected the week of November 14 at the Alliance Church in High River.

More here:

Operation Christmas Child is back

Operation shoe box is underway