News from Belarus
December 23, 2008
Here is a report from Olga Goncharenko, the director of SOR.
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Greetings dear friends and supporters,
As we celebrated Thanksgiving we counted our blessings and thought of you as one of them. Thank you for being with us and for all your prayers. We are alive and well despite all the pressures, and we are blessed because we have Jesus.
This fall was very fruitful in friendship and things we did. First of all, the pigs made it to Stankovo orphanage barn with pig food for the year. And the orphans were blessed with potatoes, carrots and cabbage as well for the whole year. We presented orphans at Slytsk with a washing machine, so now they can do laundry themselves in their group area.
Three times we did a “cutting project”. A group of Christian ladies from a different town, Mogilev, asked us to share our experience of how to start a ministry to orphans. Our staff members shared some things and we wanted to follow with practice, so we took them to the orphanages with us and since all of them are hairdressers, they did hair cuts for kids and shared about their faith too. Moreover, we found a contact person in the orphanage in their town (that’s where my parents live) and made a connection for the ladies to visit the orphans there.
Also, we did a cooking class at Slytsk orphanage for one family group of kids (brothers and sisters of different ages). We like this project as it’s very practical and helps orphans a lot. We had a girl Ira in our group this time, and I asked her to boil eggs for the sandwiches but she didn’t know how to do it. And Ira will graduate this coming May. After our lesson, I asked her if she knew how to do it and she said “yes”. And while we are eating, we like to talk about their future and help them to build self-esteem, as many of them think that they are not worthy or not able to go to college for further studies. Read more
