Livia Satterfield, born Livia Navare, never received a Christmas gift until she was 12.
She grew up in a Romanian orphanage, and that first gift, a shoe box full of inexpensive items with hair barrettes sitting notably on top – she had always longed for such a set – changed her life. Connie Satterfield from Newnan put the box in Livia's hands 10 years ago while volunteering with Operation Christmas Child.
Franklin Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham, runs Operation Christmas Child through his North Carolina, faith-based nonprofit Samaritan's Purse. This year it will send about 8 million shoe boxes full of crayons, pencils, toothbrushes, soap, dolls and balls overseas.
Connie Satterfield said she and her husband, Ray, had talked of adopting an American child, but held off because they had a 4-year-old. She was on a short-term mission trip with Sunrise Baptist Church when the members got the chance to hand out the gifts. Everything changed in an instant when she handed Livia her box.
"I saw and talked to the child and hugged the child, and God told my spirit this is the child I want you to have. The very day I met her, I knew," she said.
The adoption process took nearly two years.
Livia, now 22 and a public relations student at Clayton State University, is on the other end of the pipeline of boxes being packed for distribution worldwide. She is working at a Suwanee warehouse where 8,000 volunteers will -- in three weeks -- inspect, sort and pack an estimated 850,000 shoe boxes donated mostly by church members from metro Atlanta and the Southeast. It is one of six U.S. processing centers.
Jamie Hardenbrook, the Southeast regional director for Operation Christmas Child, said the program began in 1990 in Wales when a pastor gathered 23,000 boxes of toys for child victims of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. The pastor later recruited Graham to participate, and 69 million shoe boxes later, the operation continues to grow.
The boxes contain maybe $10 worth of trinkets and hygiene items. It is barely enough to turn the head of many American kids, but Livia said the orphans in her home could barely contain their excitement. Items the kids received through charities were typically taken away by orphanage workers to be given to their own children. She was able to keep the shoe box Satterfield gave her.
"I said, how can someone so far away send me love as a simple gift and for me to know they are loving me, where this worker next to me, I feel they are neglecting me. So it really opened my eyes. And they are telling me there is a God out there who loves me, no matter what. It really touched me," she said.
To try to return a bit of that longed-for love, Livia gave a gift in return. In her box was a little necklace, a pink and yellow heart broken in two sharing the words "I Love You." She gave half back to Connie Satterfield.
Connie, knowing the potential difficulties of foreign adoptions, did not tell Livia of her plans until the process was under way.
Livia said, "That shoe box changed my life. I also got a family with that shoe box."
Two years later, she was a wide-eyed 14-year-old, landing at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and marveling at the number of trees (she lived on Romanian plains), an entire aisle of candy at Wal-Mart, and the number of autos in Atlanta.
"Nobody is walking. It is all cars," she said.
Living with what would seem incalculable riches to a Romanian orphan, Livia has not forgotten her first Christmas gift. That is why she has volunteered for several years for the annual gathering of gifts. She hopes, once more, for something more. She wants to work full time for the organization that changed her life and she will finish her college degree.
"And I will have to let God take care of it from there on," she said.
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