Shelter Home changes the lives of young mothers and children

Reaching Asbest, the city of asbestos

I stand here on the edge of the world’s largest open mine. If you look carefully at the picture, you can see entire trains descending to the bottom!

When there are explosions in the mine, a dark cloud of asbestos rises into the sky and spreads to the surroundings... If the wind blows towards the city, the residents know what to do: they keep inside and close the windows.

There is a lot of sickness in Asbest, no wonder. The gloomy circumstances are reflected also on the streets: a lot of alcoholism, drugs, many homeless and hopeless children, youth and families.

A couple of years ago the Asbest church ordained Oleg Nikiphorov (on the picture) to lead a project of establishing a shelter for street children. He soon was joined by an experienced companion who relocated to Asbest: Oleg Popov, who served for four years with his wife Tanya as home parents in Mission Possible’s home for street children in Moscow.

In 2003-06 over 70 children were rescued through the Asbest home. For the past two years the home has also been helping young homeless mothers with children. For many people, this home has been a place of life change, salvation and becoming free of addictions - in spite of the continuous struggle with finances.

We have followed this work with interest and supported it by small gifts. At the end of 2006, Asbest home became a part of Mission Possible’s work.

A mother and a child on the dark highway:
- Irina found a new direction

BY OLEG NIKIPHOROV

Dear Friends,

This is our first letter to you from Asbest and our home where at the moment we have 20 children and 16 mothers. This is a story of one of them – a woman who didn’t want any longer to be carried by the current into deeper and deeper difficulties. Finally she decided that the direction of her life had to change.

Irina lived with a man whose drinking and violence forced her often to flee away with their baby. Frankly, Irina herself was far from being sober. The family lived in a rented shack that tilted to one side and hardly kept standing.

After one of her partner’s violent outbursts Irina decided to leave. In a cold night in May when he had fallen asleep, the mother laid the child into the baby carriage, gathered some belongings and began to walk along the highway that ran from Sukhoy Log to Yekaterinburg. The distance ahead was 90 miles (140 kilometers) – and her destination was a help center in Yekaterinburg about which Irina had heard from her friends.

The mother pushed the carriage on the road through the dark Siberian forests. She lost the sense of time and didn’t know how long she actually had walked. The night became chillier, the baby cried from hunger and cold. But Irina had decided to continue and to reach her goal somehow. She didn’t have another option. Walking forward in despair, she decided to pray to God to help her to reach the destination.

The prayer was quickly answered! A car stopped. Two young people from the church in Asbest were sitting in the car. They offered to take Irina to a shelter home for mothers and children in Asbest. The idea sounded good and Irina agreed right away.

This is how the mother and child came to our home. Irina began a new life without alcohol and began to get back on her feet. Soon after arriving, she noticed that she was expecting a baby.

Irina now lives in our shelter home, is completely sober and has a living faith in Jesus as a new foundation for her life. She looks trustfully to the future, although the life of a single mother of two children will not be easy.