My name is Elizabeth. My story begins in Ukraine.
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, soon turning to alcohol and other destructive habits that distracted her from the tragedy. Financially, she could not support us, so my mom packed us up and moved to a village in the heart of my country 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. I was only a kid, but I quickly found myself responsible for doing all the chores, helping with the livestock, and practically raising my little sister. Deep in my heart, I 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 we slept in the playroom until we could be transferred someplace with enough room 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 both of us. I was left behind.
As her father took Tanya by the hand, her eyes flooded with hope and happiness when all I felt was heartbreak. But I couldn’t show her how devastated I was. I knew 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 surrendered her rights as a mother. In that final stab of rejection, I was lost in 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 reject 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.
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, and 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 act of unconditional love, I was washed suddenly in a bright hope. God wasn’t going to abandon me like my family had—He was meeting me right there at rock bottom, and He began to nurture my heart, gradually replacing bitterness with tenderness.
Like in the parable of the sower, before the seed is scattered there are first many grounds. Rocks, thorns, a stubborn path, and rich soils. I cannot tell you which form my heart took, whether God’s Word bounced off deaf ears or was choked upon arrival before He transformed my hardened heart to flesh so that I would receive Him into my life. But I do remember the first seed that hit ready soil. My shoebox gift served as a faithful seed when I was at rock bottom, 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 have poured into me in ways I could have never imagined. Now as a grown woman actively reaching into 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. Week after week, you diligently pour into children with God’s love and truth, but for years you will not see the result of your labor. The person who packed my shoebox and planted a seed in my life may never know the result of that one faithful act. As I share my testimony, I may never know what soil God’s truth will land on. But do not be discouraged. In Mark 4:26-29, Jesus says:
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.
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’d 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 control on my own, Tanya and her baby are now living with me and my husband. She is family and a new friend all at once. As I learn more about her life since we were children, getting to know the woman she has become, I realize that now is the time to plant seeds in her life. Now is the time for me to be the 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 minister to the children set before you, the seed of God’s Word may fall on rock 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 more to fertilize the crop. In the end, it is God who sovereignly reaps a fruitful harvest.
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