In Russia Star of Hope supports children who currently reside in institutions as well as youth / young adults who grew up in an institution. Here is a unedited report from our Russian director Natasha Kirillova, St Petersburg.

Hello dear friends!

Luga children had wonderful opportunity to visit the Museum of Science where they learned about the laws of physics in an easy exciting way.

Learning about bubbles and surface tension in Russia

We had a wonderful meeting for the mothers and Grace center children. It helped that we rented a big place - our group will not be able to fit into the Center apartment! We had time of devotion when Tina spoke about the life of Christ, His love, His will for us, about our life that continues in our children. We had some snacks for the children, played games with them, every family received gifts.

It was great to see how the new members of our project are changing - they become opened and soft, learn to trust us. Uljana Mishalina is one of them. First she was very shy to come to our meetings, she thought that others will make fun of her being a mother this young.... We usually visited her ourselves and were able to build a friendly relationship with her and her Andrej. many things changed for her last year - childbirth, moving from hostel of Jukki to Andrej's newly restored (by his brother), apartment - bad relationship with Andrej's brother - moving to the very small old room that Uljana inherited from her mother ( with her grandmother who is lying in bed because of weak health at the same room). Uljana started to visit us more frequent here in St.Petesrburg and she likes it! She was able to find new friends among our Mothers and she doesn't feel strange any more. She knows that we and our members like and except her just the way she is! Now Uljana comes the first and leaves the last one, always asking at the end of the meetings "are you sure you do not need my help anymore?" that is really amazing for us, praise the Lord!

Uljana and some of the Mothers and children

It was a little sad last time when she shared about her mother ( you remember, Uljana and her brothers were raised up at the group home, but their mother is alive, she lives in a village and after graduation children visit her ). Her mother was diagnosed to have cancer and Uljamna now is very sad. Let's pray for this situation!

Thank you very much for your support to make this important work possible!

Natasha