In 2014, Oksana and Alina were adopted from a Ukrainian orphanage by local farmer Marcel van Staveren and his wife Kym.

Earlier in July of this year, Oksana went back to Ukraine with Oksana's Harvest to work at a summer camp. Oksana's Harvest is a Canadian based non-profit organisation who support orphanages in Ukraine. It is named after a different Oksana who is also a friend of van Staveren. Joseph Pinter who runs Oksana's harvest also adopted his Oksana from Ukraine. The Pinters live in New Brunswick.

The summer camp "Camp Lela", went for two weeks and Oksana van Staveren took part in looking after a group of children. Most of the children were orphans. A number of the children were orphaned by the Conflict happening over eight hours away in Donetsk.

"I was a leader to 18 kids aged 10-12 years old," said van Staveren. "In the morning I had to wake them up and we went to breakfast together. After that, we had a bible lesson. After that we had a game with the whole camp then went to lunch. After lunch, we had a program and then a game again, then supper, we had a show after supper then a camp fire then bed time," she added. 

The camp workers and children were kept busy during the active days.

During her time in Ukraine, van Staveren was able to visit her old home at the orphanage and see some of the changes that had been made to the facilities. She was able to take some much-needed supplies too.

"There's no tax in Ukraine so if you get sick and go to the hospital, you have to pay for it and sometimes people don't have money and can't afford it so I feel safer here," added van Staveren as she shared about the differences of living in Canada compared to where she came from.

As a child, van Staveren received an Operation Christmas Child shoe box when she went to Camp LeLa. A few weeks before she went out, Samaritans Purse delivered a new batch of shoe boxes to the camp.

The Children are very excited to receive these gifts. The Weyburn Community has sent thousands of shoe boxes to countries all over the world via with Operation Christmas Child for many years.