Volunteer reflects on giving and receiving

Olesea Ialanji and her six brothers and sisters grew up in a tiny village in Moldova, Russia with little more than their faith to call their own.

The family’s food came from a garden and a few domesticated animals they kept and tended themselves, and everyone had to pitch in to keep food on the table.

Each morning the children woke up, milked the cows, fed the animals and finished other chores before walking to school.

Their father worked long hours gathering and selling walnuts to support the family, while their mother stayed home to keep the household and little farm running smoothly.

“As children we had to work very hard to help our parents,” Ialanji said. “We worked long hours, five or six days a week just to put food on the table and make ends meet.”

Their family also attracted negative attention as a Christian household in a country that had only recently been liberated from the grip of the Soviet Union when Ialanji was born. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s downfall, their culture and community continued to alienate Christians, scorning them for serving God rather than the government.

That alienation penetrated the school as well, where, according Ialanji, Christian children were sent to the back of the line at lunch, meaning the food was often gone before they got their share. Ialanji and her fellow Christian students then sat in the corner of the lunchroom, isolated and hungry.

In the face of such persecution, Ialanji said Christians formed their own community within the village, banding together to support and protect each other.

For Christmas, the local church gave out small bags of treats to the children. If they were lucky, Ialanji said, they might get an orange or a small chocolate bar, which would then be split into small pieces and distributed among the family to allow each sibling to try the treats.

The children’s clothes came from donations sent from around the world and were passed down from her five older brothers to Ialanji and her sister. They had few toys and saw little color in their daily lives besides the limited art supplies they owned. The coloring books they shared showed years of reused and layers of color, and the few dry markers they had they would dip in water to bring out enough ink to write a single letter.

Still, Ialanji said, she has nothing but good, rich memories of her childhood and never considered her family poor.

“We never starved because my parents worked so hard,” she said.

THEN ONE spring day when Ialanji was 5 years old, she learned that she and the other children of her village were to receive something special from someone far, far away.

Her excitement overwhelmed her, Ialanji said, as she had never received such a gift before in her life.

That Saturday evening, Ialanji went to bed extra early, hoping to sleep the time away before she could go to church the next morning. It didn’t work, she said, and she sat in her bed tossing and turning for hours, too anxious to sleep.

The next morning, she was the first one up and dressed in her house as she prepared to greet what she now describes as “one of the brightest moments of her childhood.”

“It felt like it was the sunniest day ever,” Ialanji said, remembering the family’s walk to church that morning.

When she and her family arrived, they saw the commotion building as volunteers worked to keep order while passing out gift-filled shoeboxes to the mass of children.

Ialanji was handed one of the few red and green boxes amongst many plain ones and sent to sit with the other children to wait until all the boxes were distributed.

Once everyone had their boxes, Ialanji said they had to wait until the adults finished taking photos before they were allowed to open them.

“I just clung to it like I was afraid someone was going to snatch it away from me,” Ialanji said. She would not even let her parents hold her box.

When the pictures were finished, Ialanji said she continued to wait as her parents walked she and her siblings back across the village to open their presents together at home.

At home, the children then took turns opening their boxes. Ialanji was fifth out of seven. When her turn finally came, she said she was so excited that, instead of taking the items out of the box one by one, she dumped its contents onto the floor. Toothbrushes, candies, soaps and shampoos, bath sponges and little toys spilled out of the box. Ialanji said one item stood out among the others.

Amidst the items on in front of her was a brand new package of brightly colored markers in every shade and color. Beside them sat a blank, new coloring book.

“I just squealed and started running and jumping around the room,” Ialanji said.

“Out of all the shoeboxes packed in the United States, that one landed in my hands,” she added.

Knowing her family could not afford them, Ialanji said she had never dared ask for new markers, and the volunteers had no way of knowing the contents of that particular box.

“Being born in a Christian family, I knew all about [Jesus], but when I go the markers in the shoebox, he became really real to me,” Ialanji said. “He became kind of my best friend.”

She said she realized that day that Jesus could hear her even as a child and that he knew exactly what she wanted.

When all seven children finished opening their boxes, the family knelt together on the floor to give thanks to God. Ialanji said she didn’t realize then that God was not finished with she and her little red and green shoebox.

SIX YEARS later, Ialanji’s parents decided to immigrate to America in hopes of providing better educational opportunities for she and her siblings.

The family settled in Seattle, where Ialanji later earned a college degree in nursing.

She was in the process of procuring a nursing job after college when she ran into a woman handing out small red and green boxes, asking people to help children in need in other countries.

Ialanji said she took the box home where she pulled out an old photo taken on that sunniest of days when she was 5 years old.

“God planned that moment from when I was 5 years old. He knew what would happen 20 years down the road,” she said.

The box she held in the picture was identical to the one she’d been given to fill, labeled Operation Christmas Child.

After telling volunteers with the program of her own experience receiving a shoebox as a child, Ialanji was recruited to tell her story, traveling to locations around the country.

Even as she struggled to decide between the career she’d dreamed of and this new calling, she said God’s hand was at work.

Her new boss offered to give her time off to travel and speak on behalf of Operation Christmas Child, providing a way for her to do both.

“God’s planning is perfect,” she said. “He knew every single day of my life in the future.”

She said she looks forward to packing those red and green boxes every year, knowing the impact they can make on a child’s life.

“My story is just one of millions,” she said. “If you pack one box, pack two, and if you pack 100 boxes pack 101 because every box makes a difference.”

On Oct. 22 Ialanji will travel to Whitefish and Kalispell, making presentations at the Whitefish Lutheran Church, 5150 River Lakes Parkway, Whitefish, at 9 a.m.; Trinity Lutheran Church, 400 W. California St., Kalispell, at 11:45 a.m.; and the Flathead Valley Cowboy Church, 3171 U.S. 93 N., Kalispell, at 6 p.m.

Residents of Lakeside, Whitefish and Kalispell can take part in Operation Christmas Child by dropping off gift-filled shoeboxes at multiple locations in the area during the national collection week, Nov. 13-20.

For more information, visit https://www.samaritanspurse.org.

Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.