"Why has your 'loving' God forgotten His children?"
the Russian lady asked.
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The children tried to bundle up, but with what? Like a sub-zero knife, the heartless wind cut to the little bones, as it poured through the broken, or missing, windowpanes. The sagging, cracked doors offered no more resistance. Rain flowed effortlessly through the ceilings. It was the toilets that had no flowing water. Floors creaked, as they moved under your feet. Such were the bedrooms, where the children had to sleep double, in single beds.
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In the old church they called the kitchen, the broken slab was sinking into the ground. The elements were burning out on the stove, as the meat grinder ground itself into oblivion. The refrigerator quit working, but it didn't really matter. There was little food, if any. The cooking utensils weren't fit for feeding the animals, much less preparing a decent meal for the children.
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Everywhere you looked, there was squalor, at best. Sometimes, it wasn't that good. And to think, this is normal, daily life for these children. They didn't know they were poor. They didn't know that there was a different way of life. To the casual observer, there was no hope. There was just no way. But, as we all know, God has prepared a Way, where there was no way.
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In less than three years, the bedrooms are warm and dry. Every child is sleeping in their own, new, warm, comfortable bed. The toilets flush, the basins have running water. The kitchen has a level floor, all new equipment, from forks and spoons, to commercial stove, refrigerator, meat grinder, pots, pans, you name it, they have it. Their gardens, from American seeds, are feeding three orphanages. Believe it or not, local parents are now trying to enroll their children in the school at Barskoe Gorodische Orphanage!
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Director Alex Vasilivich asked if there was some way we could have Barskoe Gorodische proclaimed the 51st State. He smiles happily, as he says Barskoe is now more American than Russian.
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While there will be some small ongoing physical work, the real work begins now, as we continue to build relationships in Christ, with our family at Barskoe.
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And it's all in a little remote village, out in Nowhere, Russia, where the children, who are learning to believe in Him, found out God has not forgotten, nor forsaken, His orphans.....Howard
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Director Makarov Alexander Vasilevich, his staff & children are very grateful to all of you. He appreciates your prayers for his potato crop too. When Donna, Howard & I visited the orphanage this February, he exclaimed with delight, "It rained the next day after we prayed in the potato patch. Then he raised his hand to heaven & delightedly declared... "I knew it was your God!!" Alex is growing in faith as he witnesses what God has done for the orphan children, that he rescued from the streets of Russia some years ago...
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