By Michael Miranda
“I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord” (1 Sam. 1:27–28).
Two police officers were surveying their normal patrol in a residential area of St. Petersburg, Russia, when the whimpering of a child caught their attention. They searched around the apartment complex where the cries were heard, but were baffled to find no one in the area. One of the officers happened to look up, and to his astonishment, he saw a toddler tangled in the branches of a tree stories above the ground.
Unnoticed by anyone including her grandmother, the child had fallen from a sixth-story window. No one knows how long she had been hanging there.
“It was a miracle that the child was not hurt,” said one close to the incident.
Being a clear case of neglect, the police removed the girl from her home and took her to Crisis Center #15 in St. Petersburg for treatment.
When the bough breaks
This girl’s story is all too familiar to those working in Crisis Center #15, where many young victims of abandonment and neglect are treated before they move to orphanages.
The sight is devastating. The children’s heads are shaved to prevent the spread of lice. The center is crowded with as many as 20 infants and toddlers, who have all suffered through an array of unimaginable tragedies. Many of the children suffer from diseases including HIV or Aids, and all of them are under the supervision of a single paid government official.
The diseases these children endure are only part of the story. The consequences of neglect are just as damaging, stunting a child’s cognitive, emotional, and social development, as well as causing a variety of physical problems, in some cases as severe as death. The single staff member is hardly enough to meet the physical needs of these children, let alone their psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs.
“When we found that there were so few [employees] working at the Crisis Center, we wanted to supplement their staff,” Amy Norton, program director at Orphan Outreach, said.
Hannah’s Hands
Enter Hannah’s Hands, an Orphan Outreach initiative run by four Christian women, who care for the children in the crisis center. They feed, change, bathe, and pray over the children for the 30-90 days that the children wait to be placed in orphanages. For a modest pay, these four women, two part-time and two full-time, act as caregivers and instruments of Christ love to these children.
Named after the biblical figure, who offered her son, Samuel, to the Lord, Hannah’s Hands offers a warm embrace and a sincere heartfelt kindness that these children need in a trying time of their lives. They attend to the higher needs of the children, which otherwise will not be met by the single government official.
“The Hannah’s Hands women work in shifts to make sure there is someone at the Crisis Center at all times to care for the children,” Norton said, “but, we need to raise support for their salaries and to increase the two part-time workers to full-time.”
Orphan Outreach is also seeking to hire additional staff.
The Crisis Center is a place where abused and neglected children will be moved yet again. In this time of upheaval and transition, Hannah’s Hands helps to nurture the orphans’ spiritual and emotional development necessary for them to succeed in life. It is a program that helps orphans discover a sense of belonging that reaches far beyond the center’s walls; it helps them learn to love their brothers and sisters in Christ.
When Olga Vlasenko, program director for Orphan Outreach in Russia, asked a four-year-old boy in the center why he shared a bed and looked after a much younger boy, he said simply, “Because he is my brother and I love him.”
If you would like to help a child learn to love like this little boy, click here to support Orphan Outreach’s work through Hannah’s Hands.
