Category: Russia

Posts relating to Russia.

The Road to Primorsk

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Yesterday Zhenya Koltakoff and I drove from St. Petersburg north and west to the small town of Primorsk. It’s a pretty drive up the coast of the Gulf of Finland, into Karelia.

This area was a part of Finland until WWII; Koivisto is the Finnish name for the town. We visited a church, built by Finns in 1904, which is now a city meeting hall and has a small museum in one section. The church is a classic Finnish Lutheran church of the era; I really like the architecture.

First, a video of the road we drove (you’ll see the frozen Gulf of Finland at one point), then just a few pics.


An Update from Russia — About Valerie

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Many of you have by now heard our big news: we are guardians of a three year old orphan named Valerie. She came to live with us last Tuesday evening. She’s doing great as she gets settled in to her new life with us.

We have just entered a brand new phase of our lives, and it will take time for all three of us to adjust and settle into our ‘new normal’. It still feels a little unreal, like we are in a dream, we are having a crash course in parenting. Please, pray for us to go through this transition smoothly.

This update will fill in some of the blanks about Valerie, her mother, and our relationship to them.

First, Valerie is a ‘social orphan’. That is, she has a living mother but her mother is in prison and is losing her parental rights. Her mother used to live with us.

In 2003, we became guardians of a teenage orphan named Oksana (left, in front with Olga, Olga’s sister and mom, and our then-new cat Miki; July 2003). Olga had met Oksana in a summer camp several years before and was like a big sister to her and became like a mother.

Oksana lived with us for about 18 months, until her 18th birthday. She then decided to leave our home and pursue her own direction.

Oksana started living a destructive lifestyle. As the years passed, she was distant from us though we tried several times in many ways to help her. She would contact us once in a while, and then fall out of the radar again. She had several live-in boy friends and got involved in dealing and taking drugs. As a result, she contracted HIV and Hepatitis C. Continue reading →

Christmas Day on January 1?

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We celebrated Christmas on New Year’s Day because Valerie wasn’t with us on the 25th. She’d never celebrated Christmas like this (or maybe ever), and I don’t think she’s ever opened a Christmas gift. It was great fun to watch her learn what it is to open a Christmas gift. There was a sled waiting for her under the tree.

We read the Christmas story from the Bible and later Olga’s mother and some friends came to visit. We cooked a turkey and had a good meal together as a family. And the two grandmothers got to talk on Skype.

We start with Valerie opening a gift from her American Babushka:

Valerie – Day 2

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Well, I said yesterday that I wouldn’t post pictures of Valerie every day, but some folks have asked to see more.

We’ll celebrate Christmas on New Year’s Day, since Valerie wasn’t with us on the 25th. We have a tree with presents under it waiting for Saturday morning!

We start with a video of Valerie meeting babushka (grandmom) Cantrell over Skype:

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Valerie — Day 1

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OK, I promise not to post pictures of  Valerie every day, but folks have asked to see some more.

I’ll send out a more complete update hopefully in the next few days.

We didn’t take too many pictures today. We start with a short video from breakfast:

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Valerie is home!

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Some of you may not know, but Olga and I have been pursuing guardianship of a little girl named Valerie.

Valerie is the 3 year old daughter of Oksana, the orphan who lived with us a few years ago. Oksana is now in prison, and her daughter was placed in an orphanage earlier this year.

Today we finished the process of becoming guardians. We picked her up a few hours ago. I took the picture above of Olga and Valerie walking down the sidewalk to our flat in St. Pete.

I can promise that you’re going to see a lot of pictures of Valerie in the future! I’ll try to post more tomorrow.

Right now she is sleeping soundly in her new bed. It’s great to have her home.

That Can’t Be

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A few days ago, a group of Russian orphans arrived in the US to spend Christmas holidays with host families. This is one part of our work in Russia. You can see a video about their arrival here.

MIR board member Lyle Thomas writes of the day the children departed from St. Petersburg —

I met with Andrei Gvozdovsky on Monday, (who works for MIR on the hosting program) right after he and Masha (the director, his wife) had spend most of the night traveling around the city to pick up the kids and take them to the airport. The kids aged between 2 and 15, many of whom are handicapped.

Andrei’s heart went out to these kids, and he expressed hope that they would be adopted as a result of this experience. He related a short but telling moment:

One little boy asked him, “When are we leaving?” – and the Russian word implied by car.

Andrei pointed out that they would be flying. The child didn’t understand.

“Like a bird,” Andrei explained.

“That can’t be. People can’t do that.”

A Postcard from Russia — Snow and Heat

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Winter has arrived in St. Petersburg. We’ve had quite a bit of snowfall over the past few days (see our car below). The city is beautiful as we continue to press on in our life and work. Here is an update about a few items —

MIR hopes to send 39 children on the hosting program in December. Laws recently changed in Russia, and this is making it much more difficult to send children on the hosting program. Please pray for the staff of MIR, to make good decisions and have favor with the government officials. Much needs to be done before the children travel on December 13.

Our relationships and work in Estonia continue to grow, and next year should see some significant activity. I (Mike) continue to help coordinate the establishment of a center for disabled children there. We’re planning a fact-finding trip to Norway early next year, which will include Estonians and Americans. Also, an architect has offered a house that we may be able to use as a Christian guesthouse — whenever he finishes it (it’s 80% done). And we’re hoping to send a few mission teams to minister in camps next summer.

Last week, I went to Camp Elama with Sergei to work on one of the stoves (below). Sergei is working to make Elama more useful throughout the year, and fixing this old smokey stove is a part of that. As we tore it apart, we discovered that it was built with the outlet from the firebox actually below the fire — not a good design. And the stove fairly fell apart, so Sergei will need to do a lot of rebuilding. We’re hoping to host a couple of camps at Elama this winter, and it’s good that Sergei has learned how to build stoves. Most of the buildings are now heated. That is a significant improvement over last year.

This will be the first year of our married life when we won’t be in the US for Christmas.  We’ll miss our family and friends in the States, but it will be good to have Christmas and New Year’s with folks here.