SOR | Stoneworks International

Life-giving Ministry in Belarus

By Olga Goncharenko on May 20, 2013 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Dear friends and supporters, with great pleasure I am sharing with you what God is doing in Belarus.

We have had many different events and outreaches and our ministry sites this spring, especially we did a lot for Easter.

Here is a brief report.

Radashkovichi orphanage

We had a boys day of sports, where young orphans played soccer with a professional Belarusian soccer team. There was much fun, gifts and tables with yummy things afterwards. A week later we had a special event for the girls. We brought a team of Christian girl, who made nice hairdos for orphan girls and taught them how to take care of their hair, skin and nails.

During the spring break we have arranged a tour trip for 45 orphans to Minsk to see sights and also to go to a Christian theater show “ Road to Bethlehem” It took a whole day and the kids had a meal at McDonald’s, which they absolutely loved.

Zhdanovichi orphanage Read more →

More Pictures from Belarus

By Olga Goncharenko on March 23, 2013 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Here are pictures of our recent trip to Zhitkovichi –

Belarus — The Blessings Flow

By Olga Goncharenko on March 14, 2013 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Dear friends,

volunteer meeting 300x179 Belarus The Blessings Flow

Greetings in the name of Jesus. Here is an update from Belarus.

In mid-January we had a meeting for people interested in volunteering with us. We gathered about 25 both male and female and had a small presentation of all 7 places where we do the ministry. After the meeting we divided the people between all the places of ministry and now we have wonderful teams of 3-4 people to go to each place weekly. (Zhitkovichi area we go once or twice a month). It’s a real blessing as we can do much more in the ministry now.

IMG 9042 Belarus The Blessings Flow

Radoshkovichi orphanage: last year we started to have film-time there. We bring a good Christian movie to show and after that have a small discussion about the film and also tea with cookies. We had such film-time in the beginning of February. We also brought them some school supplies. Besides we invited one of the leaders of ACET ministry in Belarus to have a talk-show about relationships between boys and girls. It was dedicated to Valentine’s day.

Zhdanovichi orphanage: We started weekly craft-play time with a group of boys 4-6 years old there. Children their have some disabilities mentally and physically, so it’s challenging, but we like it.

We had a nice birthday party at Minsk shelter, giving out 6 gifts to birthday kids. We have weekly visits to the shelter. Alla from MFH is the leader of the group to volunteer there. They do a nice job sharing with kids.

We did two seminars for older orphans in Minsk orphanage, as well as planning to start computer lessons for kids there.

Borovlyani and Stankovo shelters are also visited by us weekly. We did a birthday party, met some needs such as diapers, underwear. Every time we visit we bring fruit. Kids are so happy to see us.

And the big project we did in February was our visit to Zhitkovichi area. We collected furniture and clothes for two families in the area and delivered it all. We also got wallpapers for Yulia’s (post orphan from Zhitkovichi orpahanage) family of 4 children and wallpapers for one classroom in the village school.

Plans and prayer needs:

-Please pray for our preparations of the Easter puppet show. We are going to show it at all the places. Pray for the kids to respond to the message

-Pray for Alena and Lena from MFH who are going to be water-baptised at the end of this month

-pray for our summer programs, camps to get a clear idea from God for this year and to get the provision.

Ministry in Belarus

By Olga Goncharenko on January 24, 2013 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Many more pictures of the ministry in Belarus –

Included are pictures of Alla’s birthday at the Minsk Family Home and Christmas celebrations and shelters and orphanages.

: Alla’s BIG birthday cake

Christmas in Belarus

By Olga Goncharenko on January 23, 2013 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Greetings from Belarus. The winter holidays are over (here we celebrate from mid-December till mid January) and we are blessed to share all the good news in the ministry. The temperature is minus 8 F and we have snow above knee, but we do not freeze as our hearts are warmed by what God is doing.

This holiday season we visited about 285 kids in 7 different places. We brought Christmas gifts, shared Christmas stories, showed theater performances, and performed concerts.

All began with preparing gifts for orphans. We bought sweets, toys and people from our church gathered a lot of stuff for us as well. Boys from Timothy House helped packing gifts in shoe boxes and on December 13th we started.

Radoshkovichi orphanage has 117 kids . We brought gifts for all of them and we invited a Christian band to do a program, and our volunteers dressed up in costumes of Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise men to show Jesus story.

Borovlyanya shelter has 41 kids We brought a Christian theater with puppets, a lot of music, songs and all the kids were able to participate in songs; it was great. Gifts were so much appreciated. Each gift had something sweet, toys, socks, hat, mittens, school supplies, shampoo, toothpaste, soap. It will go a long way.

We also bought and installed 2 new windows for Borovlyani shelter. The windows are for a bedroom. It was very cold there and now it’s warm and cozy.

Stankovo shelter has 12 kids and for them we have prepared special private gifts. Children drew pictures of what they would like to get for Christmas and we have prepared those gifts for them. We shared Jesus story, made some crafts and we brought food for them for Christmas table, that we shared together. It was great. Besides in December we did our usual fair with a lot of goodies for the kids. The younger kids chose toys, while the older kids got clothes and immediately put it on.

Zhitkovichi (Greben) school and foster family has 61 kids. Christian youth theater from our church went with us to do the performance. Our van was packed with people, decorations, gifts and used clothes, shoes that we have collected for the school.

The program was great and at the end we had a chance to pray with children. Then we gave them gifts. Those were the only gifts they got .

And on December 25th Irina, the director, with her family and the foster family of Lidia drove all the way from Zhitkovichi to come to our church for Christmas celebration and we shared a meal afterwards. It was a great time of sharing God’s love.

There is a shelter in Minsk that has 12 kids. We brought cookies and sweets for them and very nice gifts. The Minsk Family Home girls decided to make weekly visits to the shelter.

And another exciting event took place on January 6th (that’s Orthodox Christmas ) we got 46 tickets to the performance “Road to Bethlehem.” Kids from a Minsk orphanage (the name is Children’s Town), from the shelter and from village foster families came to the theater.

After the program kids went to McDonald’s to continue celebrate Christmas.

Family Home News

This season we celebrated two birthdays. Our leader of the girls home, Alla, turned 23. The girls themselves made a fancy cake for Alla. And another girl Lena turned 17. It was a fun birthday and also everyone shared words of encouragements for Lena. At the end girls went out to play in the snow.

In December Lean, Sveta , Alena from MFH and Lesha from TH received diplomas for finishing Youth Bible School “Step by Step” and in January Lesha was water baptized. We are very excited about that.

Thank you all for your prayers and your support.

Our Needs:

1. Please pray for our health. All our family got sick with flue and it lasted for about 3 weeks. We need strength.

2. As summer is coming, we would like to start making plans for camps. We need prayers, funds to pay for kids to go to camp and teams. If you are interested please contact us.

3. At the Minsk Family Home we have 7 girls now, and we need to expand. We are praying for another MFH for girls.

Needs for the Ministry in Belarus

By Olga Goncharenko on January 23, 2013 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Our Needs –

1. Please pray for our health. All our family got sick with flue and it lasted for about 3 weeks. We need strength.

2. As summer is coming, we would like to start making plans for camps. We need prayers, funds to pay for kids to go to camp and teams. If you are interested please contact us.

3. At the Minsk Family Home we have 7 girls now, and we need to expand. We are praying for another MFH apartment for girls.

Family Homes, Orphanages and Shelters

By Olga Goncharenko on December 7, 2012 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Dear friends and supporters,

Blessings in the name of Jesus! Our God is a great God and His mercies are new every morning. Thank you all, who prayed for our church situation with the building. It’s resolved!!! Praise God!

Here is some news from Belarus.

MFH and Timothy House

Last month we had two birthday celebrations at family home. Nastya turned 20. We had a birthday surprise party for her. The girls and the boys from homes prepared the meal, we got together with gifts and had a nice time with Nastya.

The other party took place in Timothy House and it was for Lyosha’s 17th birthday.

This was the first time in his life that he had a birthday party.

Tanya, the mom, prepared a lot of food and all the guests came not only with gifts, but with nice, kind, encouraging words for Lyosha, shared Scripture verses with him and prayed for his future life.

Lyosha (TH), Lena, Sveta and Alona (MFH) have successfully finished the Youth Bible school “Step by step” and passed the final exam.

Now we are preparing for Christmas. The girls make postcards, crafts and plan on making a small theater show on Jesus’ birth. Soon most of them will have exams, please pray for them to pass them.

Family Ministry

Recently we have purchased groceries and made 60 food packages for families, who have 3 or more kids.

The food package had basic food items such as sugar, flour, oil, rice, macaroni, etc. It was a great blessing for the families, some of them are single parent families.

Orphanages and Shelters Read more →

Connections in Belarus, Old and New

By Olga Goncharenko on November 19, 2012 / Belarus / Leave a comment

An update from Spring of Revival, Minsk Family Home (MFH) and Timothy Home (TH):

This fall we’ve been visiting shelters and orphanages, village families and village schools, we had visitors from abroad and our ministry expanded.

Minsk Family Home

We have 6 girls living in the family home, 3 of whom are attending youth Bible school and two of whom attend “Every day one month Bible teaching school on dedication to God.” All the girls are learning to volunteer with the ministry and they made a new connection with a shelter in Minsk.

The shelter has 17 kids and is situated not far from the Family home, so it gives the girls opportunity to do the ministry themselves. With a few other post-orphan girls, we have a team of 10 volunteers to make regular visits to play with kids, do homework, and make friends.

This fall we made an outing with MFH girls and TH mother to the theater. The girls like it, and it also helps to unite MFH and TH.

Our foreign friends from USA and Russia came to MFH and TH to encourage the participants, pray for them and teach them some ministry ideas. Our MFH group leader Alla went to St. Petersburg to learn about ministry from MIR.

TH opened its door for our foreign friends as well. We had nice time with our friend Heather from Australia, Stephen and Marty from USA, and Mike and Sergey from Russia. The boys enjoy having male company and our guests also pray for the boys, encourage them and share meals together.

Shelters and orphanages

We have started working with new places and right now we have 4 shelters to work with (2 are in Minsk, one is in Borovlyani and the last one is in Stankovo). In October we celebrated Mother’s Day and brought cookies for the kids, went to their concert, had some nice get to know each other time.

Besides we had a nice birthday party at Stankovo shelter, where 6 kids got birthday gifts. We shared drinks and sweets, played some games and showed kids a puppet show.

Zhitkovichi visit

This fall the need took us to Zhitkovichi twice. The first time we came to visit three very poor families with kids to bring them Good news, food packages and Christian literature. As we saw many needs we went back in a few weeks. The second time we brought clothes for kids in the village, we visited more families and made a special visit to Yulia’s family. She is a graduate of Zhitkovichi orphanage and has a family now with 2 kids and is expecting twins right now. Both her and her husband are working on the village collective farm, where the salaries are so little that they can hardly make ends meet. During our visit there was no food at all in the house. Besides, the local authorities keep coming and threatening her that they will take her kids away and place them in the orphanage, because she is so poor. We want to help her with those needs as well as spiritually. She was open and we prayed for her.

Our main contact in that area is Irina (former orphanage director), who is also growing spiritually and she is like a chaperone for all those families. She is now the director of a village school of 50 kids, and we had a birthday party at the school. We brought cakes (some kids never had fancy cakes) and small gifts. Besides, we brought balls for their PT lessons because they didn’t have any. It was a great visit.

Also we visited a foster family home in Zhitkovichi. We’ve been friends over the years with the parents and the kids and now some kids got older and started their own lives, but new ones came. We met them, shared about life of David from the Bible, and made some crafts. They loved it, so next time we visited, it was another story about Daniel. We plan our next visit around Christmas.

As we are meeting new people and new places we see more and more needs.

Prayer needs

1. Spiritual revival and growth in Zhitkovichi area

2. Healing of daughter Liza of TH parents. She has some skin illness.

Financial needs

1. We would like to get 200 Christmas gifts to give to orphan kids ($10 a gift).

2. Shelter in Borolvyani needs to replace 2 windows in the bedroom. The old ones are very shabby and the kids have to sleep in warm clothes, because it so cold there. ($500)

3. Shelter in Minsk needs some medicine for kids ($200)

4. We would like to help Yulia’s family from Zhitkovichi with food, repairs of their house and baby things for the twins.

We would appreciate any help to meet the above needs.

Blessings,

Olga

A Belarusian Ministry Tour

By Mike Cantrell on October 29, 2012 / Belarus, Estonia / Leave a comment

After traveling to the Arctic last month, I recently returned from Minsk, Belarus where I visited Stoneworks partner Spring of Revival (SOR). It was very nice to have time with Olga Goncharenko, the Director of SOR, and her family.

I visited the Minsk Family Homes: boys’ and girls’ homes for graduate orphans, helping teenage orphans make the transition from life in the orphanage to life on their own. Olga is doing very good work. In addition to the Family Homes, SOR serves several shelters, orphanages and foster families. You can see where they serve by visiting the Stoneworks Ministry Map.

Minsk Family Home 017 300x180 A Belarusian Ministry Tour

It was very nice to visit Timothy House, the boys’ home for graduate orphans. It was opened just last month, so it’s in the beginning stages. SOR has rented a house just outside of town, as opposed to the girl’s home, which is in a flat in Minsk. A very nice couple are running TImothy House. They have a heart for having a Christian foster family, and they are great parents for the boys.

Sergei Tovstopyat (the new Executive Director of MIR) traveled with me. He made a good connection with people there, and one result is that some of the girls from the family home will serve as counselors at Camp Elama this summer in Russia.

Also, Sergei shared about the Eco programs we run in the Saint Petersburg area. Alla Shestak, the director of the girls’ home, is getting her degree in chemistry was very interested in learning how to run the program. She will come to Russia to learn from Sergei how to lead it in orphanages and shelters. It’s gratifying to see various Stoneworks ministries working together.

The Minsk Family Homes are doing great. So great, in fact, that it looks like it’s time to expand (again!). We’d like to rent another flat for the girls’ home; several of the young ladies are ready to live more independently, but they still need some help. Opening a ‘second step’ flat would allow more young ladies to join the program.

A few ministry opportunities are on the horizon:

We would like to see more mission teams serving in Belarus. The doors are still open, though we never know when they may shut. To us in Europe, it is so very good when mission teams visit; relationships are built or deepened and the body of Christ can truly work together side by side. We have a few ideas about mission teams for next summer:

Estonia: last summer SOR sent several Christian foster families to a camp in Estonia. This summer, it would be great if a mission team could meet the Belorussians in Estonia and help run the camp.

Black Sea: we have the idea of sending children to Ukraine (in the Odessa area) for a camp. It would be wonderful if a mission team could meet them there and run the camp.

Belarus: Olga would love to run an English camp, and there is always the opportunity to run a simple Christian camp as well.

Speaking of Camps: Olga and Yasha have found some land that would be very nice for a camp. It is very close to a small camp owned by their church, and this would be a great opportunity to have a camp for orphans right next to the church camp.The price is not very high, and now seems to be a good time to purchase land.

Please let us know if you’d like to send a mission team or help support the work. And please keep these dear souls in your prayers.

- Mike Cantrell

Chickens, Pigs, Turkeys

By Mike Cantrell on September 22, 2012 / Belarus / Leave a comment

Olga Goncharenko reports:

Greetings dear friends and supporters,

There is a proverb that goes, “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.” We are pleased to share with you that our “pig/chicken/turkey ministry” goes well.

We are happy to present you with a few pictures of the results of getting domestic animals for the foster families. Now the foster families in the Minsk and Zhitkovichi areas have food for the winter. It’s a great blessing as each family has between 8 to 10 orphans.

August was also a time of rest for us and we spent time with family and friends. We also celebrated Pastor Tamara’s birthday. She turned 62. She is a member of our organization and we work together in the area of foster families and helping village kids. This summer she and her husband went to the camp in Estonia to help with children and with construction of the camp building.