Elena Hagemeier was 10, and living in an orphanage with her younger sister, in the northwestern part of what was the Soviet Union, when she received a shoebox from the United States.
The box came through Operation Christmas Child, an effort of Franklin Graham's "Samaritan's Purse" mission program.
"Our parents would go off and work all day long, and never bring food or money back home - because where they worked, they got paid with alcohol," she recalled of her life before the orphanage, during a meeting Saturday with members of Jefferson City's Capital City Christian Church.
Hagemeier said, when her parents came home, her drunk father would beat their mother, and she and her sister often would hide outside until the beatings ended and their mother came to find them.
So, when the girls were removed to an orphanage when she was 8, and to a different orphanage when she was 10, Hagemeier said she felt no one loved her.
The orphanage gave them an education they had not had in their home and three meals a day when they often had gone hungry.
However, the children had to share clothes, play with dolls they made themselves from sticks and dandelions, and make up other games.
Hagemeier said as she grew older, if she were not adopted by the time she was 18, she likely would be forced out of the orphanage.
"The only future (girls) had to look forward to was prostitution," she said.
When she was about 10, she recalled, "When I was at my lowest point - and felt like I was unwanted - that's when we received a shoebox."
That gift, one of more than 100 provided to children in that orphanage, was just what she needed, Hagemeier said.
Her sister's box was "full of artistic things" - just what her sister needed to support an artistic interest.
And Hagemeier's box?
She was reluctant to open it, because she didn't want another disappointment in her young life.
"But I was wrong," she said. "God gave me a specific shoebox that was just for me."
It was full of pink things - her favorite color - and included a pink teddy bear she could share her secrets with, a pink toothbrush with pink toothpaste, and a pink pen with a heart that lit up when the pen was pressed to paper.
However, the most important thing, Hagemeier said, was the booklet at the top of the box, titled "The Greatest Gift" - written in her own, native language.
She already loved to read, and now she was reading the story of "a Creator who loved me so much that he sent his son, and the cross to die for me - because he wanted me to know that he loved me."
At first, Hagemeier said, she didn't believe "the biggest fairy tale I had ever read," but "this became my hope that maybe this fairy tale wasn't a fairy tale at all."
She began praying.
In 2004, when she was 12, she and her sister were adopted, together, by a Missouri family.
She graduated from high school in the United States, then from Ozark Christian College in Joplin.
Now 26, she lives in Lincoln County and spends some of her time talking about the shoebox she received, that changed her life and her faith.
She was at Capital City Christian Church as it received an award for serving 15 years as a collection center for those Operation Christmas Child boxes.
Since 1993, the program has delivered gift-filled shoeboxes to more than 157 million children around the world.
Program officials believe the Jefferson City church has collected more than 14,000 shoeboxes in that 15 years.
Michelle Hale, of Henley, is the Central Missouri area coordinator for Operation Christmas Child.
"In my opinion, it's an eternal gift, getting the word of Christ," she said. "There are a lot of things in the boxes that meet immediate personal needs.
"But the gospel gives them hope, and shows them love that they may have never known before."
More information about the program is available at samaritanspurse.org/occ.
Hale can be reached at 573-291-8118.