Portion for Orphans Newsletter
October 10, 2005
Dear Friends and Family,
"Slava Bohgu" (Praise God) for going before us and preparing the way
for us all the time, especially in these last few days. Josh Perry and I left
on Monday,
October 3rd and have begun a great journey that will take us through Russia,
Asia and Australasia with the pure and undefiled purpose of visiting and raising
awareness of orphans around the globe. We are two ordinary people setting out
to explore and offering up our hands and voices to be used as instruments of
an extraordinary God for the sake of many children whose voices and cries go
unheard.
“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans
and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”
James 1:27 This is the purpose of our journey: to visit orphans, to help them
in any way that we can, and to tell you all about them.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” Proverbs
3:5-6 When we pray and move forward in obedience to God, trusting that He will
go before us and open doors… He does. In these first few days, we’ve made it
from Dallas to Moscow and then on to Yaroslavl, Russia where we have settled
in with a Russian Babushka named
Serafima,
begun Russian language and culture courses, and have visited Internat #9,
the orphanage, 3 times. Though it is incredibly heartbreaking to look deep into
the eyes of an abandoned 2, 4 or 14 year old child… it is encouraging to see
the way in which the children in this orphanage are being cared for.
Today, when Josh and I arrived at Internat #9, we spoke with the director
Irina Nicolayevna, in Russian, and decided that we would spend some time with
the 2-6 year old children. Their smiles brought me great joy, their tears and
reaching arms… deep sorrow. Some have great respect, others none at all. One
who stays in my mind is the small 3 year old girl who would reach for me to
hold her… each time I put her down she would go to Josh and would then soon
be back to me again. Then there was another who seemed very angry and unsure
what to do with her need for attention. She would just sit next to me and pout,
or throw dirt on my shoes, if I spoke with any other child. Poor thing, she
just knows that she wants something more and is not sure how to go about getting
it. After teaching a few to sing ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’, we had to leave them
for a little while because it seemed we were riling them up quite a bit and
they were getting pretty rough.
We then met with Galina, a 25 year old member of the staff, who has been
very helpful in setting up a schedule, through broken English and broken Russian,
for what we’ll do in the coming weeks. Each day we will be teaching English
to the staff and to the children. After that we will do one of many activities
that we brought which include many things from making knit hackey-sacks to
bookmarks, and hemp/beaded bracelets. Then we’ll play frisbee and football
outside. I asked Galina if they, the staff or children, would like to learn
about God and the Bible, she wasn’t sure. Please pray that they would be interested
and that we would be allowed to share about the love of Christ.
So far, we’ve been visiting and getting to know everyone. All of the children
are very friendly and interested in talking with us. Our frisbee has been a
great tool. :-)
Thanks for all of your prayers… please continue to pray for God to go before
us in everything that we do, and that we would be a light.
Sally and Josh
Internat #9, Yaroslavl, Russia.
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