Do you ever wish you could make a bigger difference in your family, in your community, or across the world, but your time and resources feel so limited?
The good news: making a real difference is far easier than you think, especially when you participate in Operation Christmas Child!
Each year, the non-profit Samaritan’s Purse partners with local churches, organizations, and individuals all around the globe to pack millions of shoeboxes with small gifts and essentials for children in need.
While a shoebox may seem inconsequential in comparison to the great needs faced all around the world, today’s story demonstrates how sowing one small seed of kindness truly can make a lasting difference.
Elizabeth Groff shares how the shoebox she received as a young child living in Ukraine impacted her life, leading her to God and a bright future.
This is Elizabeth’s story:
Ukraine is my birthplace. This country witnessed the day I lost everything, and it witnessed the day hope miraculously entered my life again. Who else but God could prepare the soil of my heart to receive seeds of the gospel through an unlikely vessel, especially when all I experienced should have hardened my heart beyond rescue?
I never knew my father—he was killed in an accident when I was only one year old. My mom couldn’t cope with the grief, and she soon turned to alcohol and other destructive habits that distracted her from the tragedy. My mom could not support us financially, so she packed us up and moved to a village in the heart of Ukraine to live with my grandparents. But her lifestyle did not change. She gave birth to my little sister, Tanya, and because our mom was hardly around, I had to grow up faster than other children my age.
Tanya was my whole world. Though I was only a child, I quickly found myself responsible for all the household chores, helping with the livestock, and practically raising my little sister. Deep in my heart grew a strong desire to provide a better life for Tanya than the one we were living. So, at seven years old, I took her by the hand, and we ran away. No one noticed we were gone.
My sister and I were discovered by police when we tried to sell bottles in exchange for food, and we were soon placed in an orphanage. Our heads were shaved to avoid lice, and because the orphanage was so overcrowded, we slept in the playroom until we could be transferred to a facility with the capacity to take us in.
For a while, we had each other. But Tanya’s biological father eventually found us at the orphanage. He decided to take his daughter home with him – but I wasn’t his daughter. He couldn’t afford to care for both of us. I was left behind.
As her father took Tanya’s hand, her eyes flooded with hope and happiness, while all I felt was heartbreak. I couldn’t show her how devastated I was. She deserved better than what I could give her, and this opportunity to go home with her father was the best future I could see for her, so I let her go.
My mom, on the other hand, surrendered her rights as a mother. That news was the final stab of rejection that threw me into a hopeless void, completely alone. I couldn’t see any light in my situation. How could I be loved when everyone I’d ever known seemed to abandon me? How could I feel hope when my circumstances seemed to prove that I was unwanted? For two years, it was like I was stuck at the bottom of a deep pit, lacking all hope for anything good to come.
And at rock bottom, that is where Jesus met me.
I still remember the day when I smiled again. All the orphans were gathered in a large room, and here we were told that God loves us and cares for us. As a tangible expression of that love, we were each given a unique Operation Christmas Child shoebox gift.
There was nothing I had to prove to receive this gift, nothing I had to do to earn it. Through this simple act of unconditional love, I was washed suddenly in a bright new hope. God wasn’t going to abandon me like my family had—He was meeting me right there in my despair. He began to nurture the garden of my heart, gradually weeding out the bitterness and planting tenderness in its place.
Like in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, before the seed is scattered, there are first many types of terrain. Rocks, thorns, a stubborn path, and rich soil. Eventually, God miraculously transformed the soil of my hardened heart to flesh so that I could receive Him into my life in His perfect timing. My shoebox gift served as that first faithful seed when I was at my lowest place, and the Lord produced growth from hopelessness.
At thirteen years old, God blessed me with a family who adopted me and continues to show me the unconditional love of Jesus through how they love me. They poured into me in ways I could have never imagined. Now, as a grown woman actively reaching out to the next generation and as an adopted daughter watching the devastation that tramples my home country, I am reminded that God can still produce a fruitful harvest from fields that appear hopeless.
Many of you may be experiencing weariness. You may be diligently sowing seeds of the gospel where the Lord has placed you, but perhaps you are weary of not seeing the result of your labor. The person who packed my shoebox and planted a seed in my life will probably never know the result of that one faithful act.
As I share my testimony with others, I most likely won’t know what soil God’s truth will land on. But I combat discouragement with what Jesus says in Mark 4:26-29:
“And he said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.’”
We are called to scatter seeds in faith and trust God with the growth and harvest.
At the end of 2021, I had the opportunity to return to Ukraine—and after two decades apart, I was reunited with my sister Tanya. My heart was filled to bursting! But soon after I returned to the United States, war broke out in Ukraine. On the other side of the world, my sister was trapped in a bomb shelter with her newborn son, and my adoptive dad and I quickly returned to Eastern Europe in the hopes of getting them to safety.
I cannot begin to recount the intricate ways God moved mountains to bring my sister back to me. Beyond anything I could have orchestrated myself, Tanya and her baby were able to live with me and my husband for a time. She is family and a new friend all at once. As I learned more about her life since we were children, getting to know the woman she has become, I realized that now is the time to plant gospel seeds in her life. Now is the time for me to be a sower for my own family. Maybe everything God has led me through and everyone God sent my way has prepared me for such a time as this.
A shoebox opened my heart to God’s Word, a family around the world welcomed me home, a Christ-centered community rallied around me when devastation struck—and now I have the chance to show my sister and nephew the unconditional love that I have been given. What a faithful God we serve!
As you share the gospel with those around you, the seed of God’s Word may fall on rocks or thorns. It may even fall on rich soil that will face storms and warzones beyond our control. But God is in control. He may send another who will till the land, another to weed the field, and still another to fertilize the crop. In the end, it is God who sovereignly reaps a fruitful harvest.
Do not grow weary from the good work you do (Gal. 6:9). Let faith fuel your obedience and hope motivate your steps. One day, we will see the fields ripe for harvest, and we will celebrate together the faithfulness of our good Father. For now, we hold the seed in our hands. The fields are waiting.
Want to Get Involved and Help Make a Difference?
This year, National Collection Week is November 18–25, 2024, which means there’s still time for you to get involved in this great cause. (And invite your friends, family, and church family to join you!)
Visit the Samaritan’s Purse website to learn more about the Operation Christmas Child program, including how you can get involved through prayer, packing a shoebox, or even organizing an event near you.