A Letter Changed Her Life: Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Recipient Gives Back

To kick off National Collection Week for Operation Christmas Child, Kristy sits down with three shoebox recipients whose lives were eternally changed because of a simple gift.

In the first episode of this mini series, Kristy talks with Yuliya Shubina, who received a shoebox as a girl. Growing up in Central Asia, her family experienced scarcity of food, propane, and other basic necessities. Due to being immersed in an Islamic culture, her understanding of God was skewed—she lived in fear that He was waiting for her to make mistakes. When she was 9 years old, Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse, distributed shoeboxes to her community. She was amazed when she opened hers in her family’s living room.

Her plastic purple shoebox was filled with a stuffed puppy dog, glittery pencils, and a pink Etch A Sketch. As a young girl, she was awestruck by the new and shiny items given to her. However, she said that the most valuable item in her box was a letter on blue paper, written by a young girl her age. The end of the note read, “I am praying for you,” and those words impacted Yuliya more than seven years later after she accepted Christ as her Savior.

“The shoebox was a seed,” Yuliya said. “That’s how the Lord works. He will knock on the door of our hearts and wait patiently until we open the door.”