American Volunteers Bring God's Love to Russian Orphanages
A group of 45 American volunteers brought the message of God’s love to Russian orphans during their nine-day orphanage tour last month.
A group of 45 American volunteers brought the message of God’s love to Russian orphans during their nine-day orphanage tour last month.
Christian volunteers across the country from Idaho to Florida traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Buckner Orphan Care International’s (BOCI) Russian ministry and to display God’s love to the children. During the course of the trip, Buckner volunteers conducted a Bible School and distributed new shoes, warm winter coats and other aid in 12 area institutions.
“I am a babushka (Russian for ‘grandmother’) and I’ve come to tell you that God loves you,” Sandy Woody, a Buckner volunteer, introduced herself to the children. “He has a special plan for each one of you. There’s nothing you have to do to be good enough for God. He loves you just the way you are.”
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“That is what BOCI is called to do,” Mike Douris, BOCI vice president and general manager, explains. “Orphans are treasures, and we are tools of God to show them how much God loves them.”
BOCI is a ministry of the 126-year-old Buckner Baptist Benevolences, which partners with churches to serve orphans worldwide through humanitarian aid, mission trips, orphanages improvements and social services.
Olga Vlasenko, who joined the Buckner Follow-Up Team four years ago, said there was a time when the children did not enjoy their stay at orphanages. Hospital 15, which she described as “depressing and stressful,” was “in a terrible state” with “holes in the walls, metal beds with no mattresses, bad smells, babies with no diapers.”
“The kids called the hospital ‘prison,’” Vlasenko recalled. “They said to me, ‘Olga, we hate it here.’”
Most haunting, she says, were the cries of babies calling out for attention. “There was nobody there to touch them…seven or 10 babies, just one nurse.”
But things changed at the orphanage after Buckner began donating.
The BOCI director of international programs, Amy Norton, also remembers a time when “the conditions at these institutions, in a word, deplorable,” referring to an orphanage the group visited on the anniversary trip. “We worked fervently on ways to improve living conditions for the more than 700,000 children who call the orphanages home.”
“Now, I ask the children, ‘Do you like to be here?’ They say, ‘Yes, Olga, we want to be here. It’s a nice place.’ And they are sad when they have to go,” Vlasenko noted.
