A little girl gets ready to do her craft

The final day of ministry in Russia and everyone’s wishing we could stay longer. August 20 was a great day for everyone. We basically did the same thing we did Thursday. We went to the special needs children (Orphanage 40) camp. This day, I started out with the craft group with the less challenged group. I wasn’t feeling all that great and I thought this would be a good start to the final day.

Today, they were decorating picture frames. The story was, “While man looks at the outside, God looks at the heart.’ So we wanted them to make picture frames and then we were going to take pictures of the kids. We were going to print them out and let them frame them in their frames. It would have worked great, but the printer never worked.

Nicole Latimer with Oxanna

From there, I went over to the ‘difficult’ area. One of the girls in particular, Anna, was a biter. Thursday, she bit me on the hand, arm, twisted my neck, bit someone on the nose, threw someone’s glasses and was just a little terror. For whatever reason, she was so pleasant. I sat with her. Bounced her. I gave her a ‘trot-trot’ ride. Swung her around and she only ‘tried’ to bite me once. Others of the team were able to spend some quality time with her.

Many of the guys just played ‘boy games’ with the boy. We rough housed, ran, threw them in the air, climbed the monkey bars with them, tickled them — just had ‘guy time’ with them. They don’t get much male attention,

Chad Klumpstra with boys at Orphanage 40 camp.

so this was great.

After our morning, we again went to the beach along the Gulf of Finland. It was very close — right across the street from Orphanage 40’s Camp. We simply crossed the street because we wanted to get a team photo.

MNN/Way-FM Orphan Outreach Team

After lunch back at the hotel, we traveled again to Orphanage 14’s camp. Today, however, the director was there and he handled things quite differently. After lunch, they were required to come to attention outside the dinner hall by dorms. Each dorm had a dorm leader who was responsible for their campers being there. When he called them to attention — not a sound was heard.

Greg teaches girl how to shoot basketball

Following that, we got back to work. I stayed in the recreation area this time to try to help keep the kids interested. It didn’t work. However, we did keep a few kids around to play a few games. When it was the girl’s turn, most left — but a few came over to see what was going on. I was actually able to have a great conversation with a few of them and was even able to coach a couple of them on how to shoot a basketball.

One of the girl who came over was a gal who didn’t want ANYTHING to do with us. She looked like she was only interested in being an athlete and didn’t have time for anything we had to offer, until someone told her I was coaching girls how to properly shoot a basketball. She has lots of natural ability, but couldn’t shoot well. By the time I was done, she was shooting a jump shot and making most.