Orphanage Camp

Покажите мне! (Pa-ka-zheet mne!) --That means "Show me!" That's what I heard a lot of this week. Everytime I took a photo of one of the children (or the adults for that matter) they wanted to see how they looked and if I should take the photo again. It was a long week, but it was eventful.

A group of about 10 people from Jayne's church helped to do a Christian Camp (kinda like VBS) for some children at an orphanage in town. This is not a full-system orphanage, but a little more like a large, foster care center.

The children can remain here from 6 weeks to 6 months while the government tried to get the child back into the home. If that doesn't work, then the child is placed in a regular orphanage. Some of the children were taken from their families for domestic issues, while others were put in the home by the families. The facility was well-kept and the children seemed to have very good care.

We had children ages 3-20, so it was a challenging but very exciting experience. We spent time with them each morning as a large group—we did songs and other activities with them.Then we divided into 5 small groups by age, where they did a Bible lesson and a discussion.
Then we did games as a group outside. This was always a big hit, but was especially exciting on the last day when we did games with water balloons (I think those are the universal "have a great time" item).

We finished the day with a craft, one for the older kids and a different craft for the little guys.

Because my language skills are still limited, I self-designated myself as the photographer--I had lots of fun! And as I said earlier, it was a great connection to have with the students, since I could not talk with them a whole lot. It was a joy to show them them photos. Here are some of my favorites.

The biggest highlight of my week was meeting Dima. He does not live at the orphanage, but he came with his grandmother to help. We tried to keep each other busy when the others were planning things that I couldn’t understand and he didn’t care about. He was very fascinated that I could speak English but not very much Russian. Everyday he asked me, “Do you speak English?” I said yes. “Fluently?” I told him of course. He would then look very impressed and say, “Klas-na” (which is like saying “very good” or “cool”). Yep, somebody thinks I’m cool.

До свидания! (Da cvee-dan-ya)