OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD

Oxana Prohorova is embraced by the Rev. Franklin Graham, right, after speaking to volunteers at an Operation Christmas Child distribution center in Charlotte last Wednesday. Volunteers work on assembly lines at the center to process some 1.6 million of the eight million shoe boxes that Operation Christmas Child intends to deliver this holiday season. AP Photo/CHUCK BURTON CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Color is what Oxana Prohorova remembers from the shoebox she opened a decade ago in Belarus.

She no longer has any of the toys and trinkets from that gift box sent to her by Operation Christmas Child, but she still remembers the colors that brightened the drab world of her childhood.

''It has touched my heart and it was a blessing to me,'' Prohorova told project volunteers Wednesday at a warehouse in southwest Charlotte.

Those volunteers will help assemble about 1.6 million of the 8 million shoeboxes that Operation Christmas Child intends to deliver to nearly 90 countries this holiday season. The warehouse is one of several around the country operated by evangelist Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse relief organization, which started the project 13 years ago to bring Christmas gifts to children in Bosnia.

Now 22 and a senior at the University of South Carolina, Wednesday was the first time Prohorova had ever seen where the shoeboxes are checked and prepared for shipment after being assembled by families from around the region and collected at churches and other institutions.

She was in tears as she addressed volunteers.

''You guys don't know how much it means to get a shoebox,'' she said. ''Everything in the shoebox means so much to us.''

Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and his father's successor as head of the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also spoke to workers.

''The most important ingredient we stress to put into the box is prayer ... to pray for the child who will get this box,'' said Graham, dressed in his trademark black leather motorcycle jacket and baseball cap.

Some 40,000 volunteers, some from as far away as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri, are expected to pass through the Charlotte warehouse this season. They review the contents of shoeboxes, removing inappropriate items such as perishable food, military-type toys, liquids or medications and chocolate - which can melt in transit - and filling any empty spots. Shoeboxes are then stacked on pallets and wrapped in plastic for shipment overseas. The things that are taken out are given to local churches and charitable groups.

''You come here, you just feel the love,'' said Tim Single of Massillon, Ohio, who helped organize two busloads of volunteers from The Chapel, an Akron, Ohio-based church, who are working for a week at the Charlotte warehouse. ''It's work, but you go away with Christ. It's like coming here to get a spiritual drink of water.''

For Prohorova, receiving a shoebox was a sign of love.

About a fifth of Belarus was evacuated due to fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in neighboring Ukraine in 1986, when both countries were part of the Soviet Union.

She later visited the United States on a student exchange and in 2001 was granted asylum for religious reasons and allowed to live with a family in the Charlotte suburb of Rock Hill, S.C.

After she graduates from college in May, Prohorova said, she hopes to perform church mission work in Africa.

On Wednesday, though, she showed off the shoebox she packed for this year's Operation Christmas Child. It included colorful hair accessories, a plastic watch, candy, a toothbrush and toothpaste and - most important - a letter telling her story and a photograph.

She still remembers how jealous everyone was of the girl in her class who received a watch in her shoebox - and of the people whose boxes came with letters inside.

''Everyone wanted to write back to the families,'' she recalled. ''To open a box and see that somebody cared so much for you in a foreign country, it means so much.''