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July 2002
Greetings from Moscow!
We have been out of touch with all of you for what seems like
a very long time. Life has been very busy for the past few months
and we don't really see it quieting until mid-August. Early in
May, I (Ellen) traveled to Belarus to visit again with the Belarusian
Round Table and visit some of their projects. During that visit,
she saw some of the ways the BRT is responding to the critical
needs in that country.
In Minsk, she visited two shut-ins with multiple sclerosis who
have been confined to a single room for 8 to 10 years. They are
confined to wheelchairs that don’t fit through doorways.
One woman lives on the fifth floor of a walk-up. The BRT has begun
a home health program for invalids, employing a nurse who visits
regularly, providing medical care, massage therapy, emotional
support, as well as cooking some meals and picking up medications
from the pharmacy. Invalids in Belarus and in Russia are at the
mercy of friends and family. The husbands of both of these women
abandoned them when they became ill. They both have teenage daughters.
One daughter helps in every way she can, the other spends as little
time at home as she can get away with. The strain of this latter
relationship is weighing heavily on her mother’’s health.
The support of the BRT has been a godsend for these women.
In Gomel, I visited with a group of young people and a psychologist
from Svetlagorsk, and an Orthodox priest from Gomel who are trying
to find ways to help in an overwhelming situation. Svetlagorsk
is famous in Belarus as the city where drugs, and then HIV, entered
Belarus. The city has a population of 10,000. Of that number,
1,700 are registered as HIV positive. Currently they
have some 25 people in the advanced stages of AIDS. They expect
that number to climb sharply in the near future. At the moment,
there is no hospice care available. They hope to get some international
support to develop a hospice program. The BRT is supporting programs
for education and rehabilitation. The Orthodox church in the Gomel
region is planning to establish a parish for drug addicts and
HIV/AIDS patients. The young people I met with are attempting
to set up a drug rehabilitation program with a strong spiritual
element. They have worked hard to inform the church and community
of the problem that exists. All three are HIV positive. In addition
to everything else they do, they work tirelessly to support friends
in the final stages of AIDS. There is no one else.
In the women's prison in Gomel, the problems are many. I was
deeply impressed with the leadership at the prison. They have
a keen understanding of the needs of the inmates (both within
the prison and as they prepare to return to their communities).
They have ideas for how to address these needs. What is lacking
is funding and support. One of the problems they try to cope with
is keeping the prisoners occupied. During Soviet times, the prison
made many of the uniforms for the Soviet Army. Now those contracts
go out on bids, and the prison is unable to keep more than a small
fraction of the prison population employed in the factory. Funding
and supplies are short. On the day I was there, they didn’t
even have aspirin. Using drugs in Belarus is a
criminal offense, so the prison also deals with the problems of
addicts and the growing number of HIV+ inmates. Generally, women
have a harder time returning to public life than male prisoners.
They work hard to prepare the women to reenter society, but there
are many obstacles facing these women on the outside. The director
I spoke with shared an incident with me. A young
woman in the prison is getting ready to be released. She has gotten
off drugs while in prison and has worked hard. The director asked
her one day if she couldn’t stay off drugs. The woman responded
with pain, "Everyone I know uses drugs. How can I hope to
stay off them?"
I was able to visit two of the diaconal stations of the Belarusian
Round Table. One is outside of Minsk in the rural community of
Tarasova, the other in Gomel. There is one in each of the regions
of Belarus. They provide community support through clothes closets,
food pantries, help with prescription medicines, etc. One is working
on building an orphanage for invalid children, the other supports
a camp program for the Chernobyl kids (children from areas most
heavily damaged by radiation). A partnership has recently been
established between the church in Tarasova and a PC(USA) congregation.
We hope to make more connections like this.
These are some of the areas in which we hope to work with the
Belarusian Round Table. I’ll return to Belarus in September
for the annual meeting of the BRT, and I hope to spend time then
visiting other diaconal stations.
In mid-May, our family returned to the United States for our
oldest daughter’s graduation from high school. She returned
with us to Russia in mid-June and has been involved in our work
as we have traveled to camps and churches. She will return to
the U.S. in late August to go to Carleton College in Minnesota
in September. We have had a wonderful summer with her. We will
miss her as she returns, but know that she has a wonderful and
exciting adventure before her.
We will be sharing more of our summer with you shortly. We would
ask for your prayers for the important work that is going on in
Belarus. Our best wishes to each of you for a safe close of the
summer.
Peace and blessings,
Alan & Ellen Smith
The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 94
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