Of course we were destined to be great friends. Our daughters are the same age. We both grew up on farms. We love to cook. We lost our fathers the same year.

Seventeen years ago, through a Christmas gift, I found the woman I consider my Belarusian sister. I started packing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan’s Purse when it started back in 1993, and packing OCC shoeboxes became my favorite Christmas project.

When my daughter Rachel was 3 years old, I packed one specifically from her to a little girl in her age group. I sent it off with the rest of my boxes. One day an airmail letter addressed to Rachel arrived. When I saw her name on a letter addressed in Russian, I was a bit startled. When I opened it, I found a letter from the mother of a little girl in Belarus named Katya who had received Rachel’s box at a Minsk day care.

I wrote back to the mother, Lena, and we found that we had many things in common. Our letters flew back and forth over the ocean for years, sometimes with bad translations, as I attempted to use an online translator and she used a friend to translate. We did learn to say “Hello” and “I love you” in one others’ languages so that our brief, annual phone calls could have a few words in addition to our shared laughter for $3 a minute. (Katya now speaks English and has facilitated phone calls for us.)

We shared our lives throughout the past 17 years. Facebook came along, and now we don’t write often but can keep up through social media. (Although the Russian language still thwarts my efforts at communication!)

We have a dream of meeting one day. We want to cook together, laugh together and give each other a big hug. I’ll always marvel at how that one specific box made its way to Minsk and into the life of a woman who was so like me yet so far away.

Christmas is a perfect time to love our neighbors, even those who don’t live nearby or even speak our language. We may find we aren’t so different after all. Merry Christmas … or с рождеством!