Across the world, boxes are gifted to children throughout the holidays. More than 170 countries and territories receive these gifts each year, packed by volunteers and church ministries in the U.S. The program, Operation Christmas Child, is a ministry of international relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse. 

Boxes can be filled with clothes, toys of all kids, activities, and other practical items. 

As a child, Sakiusa Rokovasa Vakadewatabua, Jr. – Zac for short, received one of these boxes in Suva, Fiji. He still has that yo-yo today. 

Zac has been working as a children and youth pastor at the United Methodist Church in Clay Center since 2021. He also serves as the National Spokesperson for OCC, a role he has held for two years. 

This year, he and Frances Benson, project leaders at the Clay Center UMC, will lead the youth group in packing and sending 1,500 Christmas boxes, up from last year’s 1,300. It’s such a large undertaking that the group meets every other month to pack a few hundred boxes. The entire lot will be sent out to Mizpah Methodist Church, their drop off location, the third week of November, Vakadewatabua said. 

Little Toy Cars

This year’s boxes will hold an extra dose of love as they will each include a handmade car crafted by Vakadewatabua’s namesake and father, Sakiusa Sr., or Saki.     

A professional boat maker, configuring intricate wooden vessels, Zac Sr., who still resides in Fiji, made a car for every holiday box while visiting this summer.

“I came here and I was not doing anything,” he said. “I’m a tradesman I want to do something. I told him ‘I can’t be like this I have to do something.” 

During a six-month visit to the U.S., along with his wife, Kereni, the father and son made a plan. They headed to Home Depot to pick up tools and machines, along with plenty of 2x4s. 

“He was in the shed all day,” z Vakadewatabua Jr. said. 

Starting with a single board, he planked, added a hole that serves as both a window and handle for the child, then made wheels out of plywood that were affixed with wooden dowels as axels. 

Within only a few weeks he had made more than 680 cars. 

Zac Jr. called the cars their “wow item,” which will be packed with adjustable shoes that can accommodate growing feet, stuffed animals, and more. 

“Our hope is every item they see, it has a story. But we didn’t buy this from a store, we built this.” 

And though it does keep him busy, Vakadewatabua Sr. said it’s also a joy to donate his time to the church. 

A Career in Boat Making

From the time he was 19, Zac Sr. was working around and on boats. First at the shipyard for the Fijian government. 

After graduating from the largest Methodist high school, then completing a boat building course at the Fijian Institute of Technology, he was hired as an apprentice.

“I had told them ‘No I don’t want to go back to school, I need practical,” he said. “They allowed me to come in; said I had to do an apprenticeship because I’m young,”

“That’s how my family survived, only on boat building. I had five kids and sometimes it wasn’t enough so we fished to eat,” he said. “When I got back from work I would catch fish, five kids eat a lot,” he laughed. 

Living about 40 steps to the ocean, he regularly builds half-cabins, tunnel boats, raging boats, fishing boats, and more. 

“I should have started [on my own] earlier,” he said. “That’s my biggest regret.”

Hosted out of the port of Nandi, Captain Cook Cruises hires Zac and his employees to create custom, handcrafted boats. His classic builds – a trade word for wooden – can be painted or varnished in order to keep them weather and waterproof.

Now 63 years old, he owns his own business, accepting commissions and working for companies who offer day cruises for tourists. The venture started 10 years ago; he now employs one of his sons – and four others full-time. The group schedules repairs to full builds, which Zac Sr. designs.  In total they build 12 per year, he said. Laughing that customers kept calling to ask when he would be back from Kansas. 

“There’s a big hotel in Fiji, he’s calling me calling me calling me, ‘When are you coming back? There are a lot of jobs to be done.’” 

His employees also called during the trip, asking for tips. 

“I kind of stole him away; they keep calling him,” Zac Jr. said.

And while Zac Sr. said he loved visiting his family, including his granddaughter, there are things he misses about home, like the fresh fish and tropical fruits, including mango, passionfruit, banana, and pineapple – Midwestern versions are nowhere as sweet, he said. 

His running joke with Zac Jr. is that he will build a boat in Kansas during one of his visits.

“They are all fiberglass boats. If I build a classic boat for here, everybody’s going to admire it because that’s money,” he said, laughing. 

In total, Vakadewatabua Sr. is one of only two shipwrights in Fiji. It’s status that brought a teaching gig, showing international students how to build flat bottom, open pond boats for three weeks. 

During his stay, Zac Sr. completed the 1,500 wooden toys in an act they see as coming full circle; soon after he returned to Fiji, a country that receives OCC boxes (though not Clay Center UMC’S). 

“Two years ago we got a reply from someone, written in French,” Zac Jr. said of their boxes that landed in Benin in West Africa. “Last year our shoeboxes were processed in North Carolina sent to Zambia and Burundi and the [lady collecting them] said she couldn’t believe it. She was born in Clay Center and baptized in the Presbyterian Church and showed pictures. It’s a small world, the boxes really bring it together.” 

Images: Top: one of Sakiusa Sr.’s handmade wooden ships in the town of Suva, Fiji. Middle: Sakiusa “Zac” Vakadewatabua at an Operation Christmas Child event. Left: Sakiusa Sr. And his wife, Kereni, who live in Fiji, with a box of wooden cars. Sakiusa Sr. Made 1,500 of these wooden toys while visiting Clay Center.