Church resumes Operation Oreos

By: 
Larry Limpf

For nearly 20 years members of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Pemberville have been collecting packages of Oreo cookies for distribution to those serving in the military – home and abroad.
The pandemic brought their efforts to a standstill last year but Operation Oreos has resumed and this year the church partnered with Christy’s Corner Café in Elmore where more than 500 packages of the cookies were collected.
On April 1, volunteers gathered at the church to once again box the cookies for mailing, said Eileen Schuerman, a church member and Pemberville resident who’s been conducting the drive.
“We have five or six who are overseas and the rest are in the states,” Schuerman said. “Personal items such as razors, deodorant, socks, cards, trail mix and other snacks are also packed with the cookies.”
Christy’s Corner Café is the first business sponsored by the Engaging Opportunities Foundation to provide employment opportunities for individuals with special needs while providing a service to the community and teaching employment skills for its clients.
One of those clients is Baize Kaylor, whose brother, Blake, serves in the U.S. Army. On his brother’s behalf, Baize led the effort to collect the packages of Oreos at the café before they were transported to the church.
The café initially set a goal of 100 packages of the cookies but easily surpassed that in less than two weeks of collecting. Fifty packages were donated by the Windsor Lane Health Care and Rehabilitation Center in Gibsonburg, said Madeline Hines, lead job coach at the café.
“The response by the community was amazing,” she said. “We even had a donation of money from Arizona.”
The last packaging and mailing of cookies at the church prior to April 1 was in December 2019.
Another mailing of packages is scheduled for mid-May, Schuerman said.
“We still have another 200 or so packages left,” she said. “We’ll send them to the same people or if we get more names to others too. We have enough money; we had some anonymous donors as well as strangers who contacted us, for postage. And we have plenty of the Oreos.”

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