Zhenya Kopushu is one of the young ladies who lives with us in Russia. She’s working in a hospital for abandoned children.  She is praying about being one of the counselors when we build Immanuel Children’s Home (more about that later).

Below is some news from her from our church’s website.

NEW MINISTRY – TO ABANDONED CHILDREN IN THE HOSPITAL

Zhenya Kopushu graduated from the StreetCry School of Ministry in 2004. Since then she worked as the Russian language and literature teacher in the Harvest Christian School, served as children’s pastor in our church and is currently heading intercession.

This year the Lord opened doors for Zhenya to minister in Tsimbalina hospital for abandoned children. Here are some of the most recent testimonies from her work there:

“For several months we prayed for doors to open. The Lord touched the hearts of the doctors to receive us favorably, even though it is a rare case in Russia that hospitals would be open to Christian workers coming to help with the sick, to pray and preach the Gospel.

Children are taken to this hospital from the streets and from broken homes of drug addicts, alcoholics, etc… Their parents do not care for them.

Every child’s story is heartbreaking. It still takes a lot of effort on my part to hold back the tears while I am in the hospital – I do weep though a lot, as I intercede for the children later at home. Every child has experienced malnutrition, severe beatings, often times even rape.

In addition to many sicknesses, they suffer from loneliness, rejection and fear of the future, which for most of them is uncertain.

At best, it’s a Russian orphanage with very little true concern from the heart, for these children…

They are hungry for love. When I come, they run to me, take me by the hands, call me Mom and do not let me go. At the end of every visit, they ask me to take them home with me and I just wish I could – I want to take them all.”

Here is just one of many stories:

Masha Orehova, 10 years old  was brought to the hospital from a home where both mother and father are alcoholics. I first met her a couple months ago.

She crawled to me on the floor, called me Auntie – her look was so miserable, and voice so faint that everything inside of me crumbled with pain. The same evening the doctors described her background.

When she was 5 years old, her father being drunk threw her out of a 5th storey window. She survived but her backbone was badly damaged.

She was bed-ridden for a long time and eventually lost her ability to walk. Nevertheless, she was given back to the same parents again. Both mother and father kept regularly beating her up and father even raping her.

Finally, the authorities started the process of taking parental rights away from them, and Masha was placed in Tsimbalina hospital. Her first several nights in this hospital she refused to sleep in a bed but crawled under it to hide herself and slept there – she was bound by fear of everyone.

In the doctors and nurses, she saw a threat rather than people trying to help her. She looked at them as if she were a small wolf, hungry and fierce, ready to bite.

It is scary for me just to try to imagine the emotional and physical torment she has been going through all these years – I understood that only God could touch and restore her broken heart and broken body, giving her hope and a future.

I began regularly praying for Masha and telling her about Jesus. I told her that Jesus loves her and wants the best for her.

Slowly she started changing, fear was gone, and she began smiling as she saw me come. Every time I came, she asked me to tell her more about Jesus.

Faith was birthing in her heart.

Toys and games were not so important – all she wanted to do was lay there and listen to me speaking about Jesus. During Christmas, we brought presents to Masha as well as all the other children in the hospital. She was so happy – thanking God for all!

She wanted me to read her the story of how Jesus was born over and over again until she was able to repeat it herself.

Very recently, Masha received Jesus into her heart – I prayed together with her. Please join me in prayer for Masha’s complete restoration and for her future, for God’s will and plan to be done in her life rather than the devil’s plan for destruction.

Zhenya is seriously considering and praying through the idea of opening a small family type Christian orphanage where she and several other girls from our church, driven by the similar concerns and currently involved in different capacities in ministering to suffering children, could live and take such children in who have nowhere else to go, providing them with the atmosphere of God’s love, salvation, restoration, healing, hope and a future.