Special Delivery

For the last five holiday seasons, Katie Stoker, 12, and her family have put together care packages filled with goodies and health products for children in Third World nations.

This year will prove no exception, though the Huntington Beach family will take the gesture a step further: Katie and her mother, Jan, along with three other families, will fly to Nicaragua to deliver the shoe boxes in person.

The Maranatha Christian Academy sixth-grader says she’s excited about traveling to a foreign country and is anxious to see the faces of the children who will receive the boxes, which contain small items such as candy, combs, paper, pens, toothbrushes and toys.

“I really look forward to opening the box that I made, with the girl” who will receive the gift, Katie said, adding that she knows little about the Third World nation other than the recent devastation it suffered from Hurricane Mitch. “I heard about the flooding. Other than that, not much else.”

Katie’s not the only one anticipating her trip. Jan Stoker anxiously awaits their impending two-day adventure.

“It’s neat to be part of a good work,” Jan Stoker said, but she noted how sobering the trip will be. “I think it’s good for an adolescent to see this. It’s more than a shoe box” to the Nicaraguan children.

Spearheaded by Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief organization, the goodwill project, known as Operation Christmas Child, will send more than 2 million boxes to 50 nations by month’s end. Since 1993, the nonprofit group has delivered more than 3.5 million boxes to such countries as Bosnia, Jamaica, Lebanon, Mexico and South Africa.

Sitting steps away from the Irvine warehouse where more than 40 volunteers inspect and fill the remaining boxes, volunteer Kathy Hladky peers at the thousands of boxes that await departure.

“It really looks like Santa’s workshop,” she said of the organization’s West Coast processing center. “There are just piles upon piles of boxes.”

The group could still use more volunteers in Irvine, said Lucy Carter, the organization’s West Coast coordinator. Volunteers 13 years and older work at the facility from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Information: (714) 432-7030 or (949) 472-8057.