04550
December 16, 2004

Mending broken hearts and lives in Beslan

PDA brings hope and healing to victims of terrorist school attack

by Jerry L. Van Marter

       Beslan may never recover from the tragedy, but a recent letter from Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missionary the Rev. Donald Marsden details the efforts of some — supported by $10,000 from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) — to mend the broken lives and hearts there.

       Last week in Nalchik, a city 60 miles from Beslan in the northern Caucasus region of Russia near the breakaway republic of Chechnya, Marsden’s Moscow-based Narnia Center conducted a seminar for victims and their families entitled “Offering Healing and Hope for Children in Crisis.”

      The seminar was taught by its developer, Phyllis Kilbourn of the international Christian mission Rainbows of Hope, and was funded primarily by PDA. Following the seminar Marsden traveled to Beslan — the first PC(USA) member to go there since the September tragedy.

      The full text of Marsden’s letter:

Dear Friends,

      As the celebration of the birth of Christ approaches, we take comfort in the knowledge that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

      The Gospel of Matthew 2:13‑18 reminds us that for the family of Jesus and the families of Bethlehem in Judea, the first Christmas was anything but a holiday.  An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream warning him to flee quickly to Egypt with the child Jesus and his mother, because Herod was seeking to destroy the child.

      Joseph, Mary and Jesus escaped that very night, but the other children of Bethlehem were not so fortunate.  Herod sent his soldiers into Bethlehem.  They executed his order to search out and put to death every male child in the city under the age of two.  The report of the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem concludes with these words from the book of the prophet Jeremiah:

        “A voice was heard in Ramah,
        wailing and loud lamentation,
       Rachel weeping for her children
       she refused to be consoled,
       because they were no more.”

      What consolation can you offer to the parents of innocent children who have been senselessly murdered?

      These thoughts were on my mind last week in the city of Nalchik as a team from Narnia Center conducted a seminar entitled “Offering Healing and Hope for Children in Crisis,” taught by Phyllis Kilbourn of the international Christian mission Rainbows of Hope.

      Nalchik is the capital of the traditionally Muslim Kabardino‑Balkaria Republic.  It lies just north of the Caucasus mountain range which divides Russia from Georgia.  It is an area for summer hiking and winter ski excursions in Russia. 

      Nalchik is located about 60 miles from Beslan, the city where on Sept. 1 thirty‑two Jihadist terrorists commandeered School No. 1, taking hostage more than 1,200 people.   The 48 hour siege which followed ended with the death of more than 335 hostages, about half of whom were school children. 

      Nalchik is only about a hundred miles from Groznyy, the capital of Chechnya, where a long and bitter war between Chechen insurgents and Russian federal troops, a

war fueled by ancient smoldering hostilities has been again fanned into flame over the past 10 years.

             In spite of the fact that the entire region of the Northern Caucasus is considered a political hot spot and a potentially dangerous area for travelers, we had a wonderful week in Nalchik, and were well cared for by the delightful people who received us as we met with seventeen Christian children's workers from churches in six cities in the area. They were very grateful for the excellent training they received from Phyllis, whose presentations included:

• Trauma and the Cycle of Violence;
• Trauma, Loss and Grief;
• Children’s Emotional Health in Trauma;
• Trauma’s Impact on Behavior;
• Attachment, Bonding and Boundaries;
• Interventions: Structure and Counseling;
• Interventions: Parental Support and Spiritual Nurture; and
• Caring for the Caregivers. 

       We held a similar seminar for 25 children’s ministry leaders from churches in central Russia just outside Moscow the previous week. 

      On Dec. 10, the day after our training seminar concluded, Phyllis, Larisa Zhukova (editor of Narnia Center’s magazine on children's ministry) and I traveled to Beslan to meet with the children and youth ministry workers of the Beslan Baptist church. 

      Having waited more than half an hour at a checkpoint as we drove from Nalchik, into Northern Ossetia, we arrived in Beslan just after the sun had set.   As we approached the city our driver, Muayet, drew our attention to the cemetery on the left side of the road. 

       He told us that the cemetery had been too small to accommodate the large number of graves of the victims, so the gates of the cemetery had to be expanded to make room for them.   Entering the city he drove us to a spot opposite the school where the tragedy had taken place.  Looking across the railroad tracks by the light of dusk we could see the empty school and the gymnasium with no roof, a huge semi‑circular gap blown out of the upper part of the wall.

       We proceeded just two or three blocks and turned onto a muddy, unpaved road along which the Baptist church is situated.  This church, like other Baptist churches we have seen in Russia, is little more than a private home on a tiny lot, but in the case of Beslan two such old houses have been joined together to make room for a growing congregation. 

      On this muddy street just a few houses further down past the church lives the pastor of the church, Sergei Totiev, and his wife Bella, who lost two children in the attack and his brother Taimuraz and wife Raisa, who lost four children. We later met the Totiev brothers to express our condolences and to assure them of our prayers for their familiesand for their city. 

      Pastor Totiev was preparing to travel to Little Rock, Arkansas to join his wife and their son Azam who is to undergo surgery for the second time. The surgical operation to save his eye severely damaged in the explosion was unfortunately unsuccessful.

       One of the participants at the seminar in Nalchik, Lada, a member of the Baptist church Vladikavkaz, the capital of the republic only 20 minutes drive from Beslan had told us stories of the Totiev family, who are close friends of hers. 

      According to eyewitnesses, on the second day of the ordeal, Larisa, the 13-year-old daughter of Taimuraz and Raisa Totiev, a quiet girl, stood up and said to one of the terrorists, “Shoot me and let these others go.”  She was told to sit down, and later she died in the holocaust after the explosion.

      Those who survived the holocaust have repeatedly witnessed to the fact that thechildren of believers sensed the presence of Christ at all times during the ordeal, and were not crippled by fear as many others were.

       Bella, the wife of Sergei Totiev told Lada that for the first day she prayed that her children would be rescued, but felt that her prayers were somehow not being heard, as if she were talking to a wall.  On the second day, while walking down the street with her sisters she suddenly stopped in her tracks, and felt that she must pray the words “Lord, Thy will be done.”  She realized that she might not see her children again.  And then she felt a great burden lifted. 

      Her son Azam, who is in the hospital in Little Rock, was sheltering his little sister, who had lost consciousness, and was attempting to take her to a spot to get her fresh air and some water when the explosion happened which ripped his eye apart. His sister was torn out of his arms.  In spite of the injury to his eye, he went to look for his sister, but could not find her. 

      Lada told us that she visited Beslan during those days.  The air stank of corpses.  Everywhere funerals were being conducted in the open outside people’s homes.  One old man who came to the funeral outside the Totiev family home began to invoke curses on those who had attacked the school and called for acts of vengeance.  Pastor Totiev responded saying, “The curses you invoke will only return to visit you.  My children are with the Lord.  They have gone to a better place.  I will not seek revenge for my loss.”

       Lada herself has a five-year-old son.  Although she lives in a neighboring city, she says that for two months she was afraid to go outside her house to take her son to school.  Terror organizations have continued to threaten Russian officials by Internet saying, “This is only the beginning.”

      On Friday night after stopping at the home of the Totiev family, we were guided by car to a place not far from there to meet with Gehrman and Madina Djeriev, a husband and wife team who are the children and youth ministry workers of the Beslan Baptist church and for the Baptist churches of Northern Ossetia. On the side of the building was a sign that read “Christian Center.”

      In fact it was a beauty salon/health club, but since September, the owners of the salon have opened their doors to the church to use their beautiful building as a gathering place for the youth ministry and for counseling. 

      The youth group of the church had gathered to watch a film that night.  Gehrman and Madina told us that they are physically and emotionally exhausted from caring for the wounded children and grieving families of the city. No sense of normalcy has returned to the city, and many of the children still have not returned to school. Some children are stillhospitalized, some paralyzed, some blinded.  Some children died after being hospitalized. Some are still dying. 

           One little boy who survived the attack, was hospitalized with a fever caused by dehydration.  Every time his mother would come close to him he would scream, “You are a dragon!” He later died of the fever.

     Many foreign organizations have sent help in inappropriate ways.  Some children

have been sent on vacation after vacation. They have been given boom boxes and laptop computers.  But they have not been helped to face their grief and losses. 

      Psychologists who have been sent in to help have found that there is not much for them to do, because people in Northern Ossetia are not familiar with psychologists and believe that they are only doctors for the insane.  Many of the psychologists have been giving inappropriate counsel to families and children.

       Madina says that children who survived the ordeal aged many years in those three days.  They no longer speak or act as children.  Their childhood laughter and joy has disappeared. They have quickly become adults. 

      The church ministry workers have been trying to care for the families of members who have suffered loss and all others who have welcomed them into their homes.  But they are overwhelmed, because the numbers of those who grieve and who are injured are staggering.

      Phyllis was able to offer them encouragement and some timely suggestions on continuing this difficult work.  They were distressed about one girl who had survived the siege in the school, but whose mother had died.  The mother was a member of the church, and brought her daughter to Sunday School, but the relatives who have adopted her are not Christians, and will not let her attend the church or let them visit the girl.

       Fourteen children and two teachers from the Beslan Baptist church Sunday School died in the siege.  The church has not been able to conduct Sunday School classes  since September, and they would like to begin soon — if possible by Christmas — but they are not sure how to start again after this tragedy.  They have invited me to return to conduct a seminar with the Sunday School teachers to help them prepare for a new beginning. 

      We are praying about how to respond to this invitation. In addition to ministering to the victims of the terrorist attack, they would like to open a rehabilitation center for drug-addicted youth who have left their families and are wandering the streets of Beslan.

      Where do we go from here?

      In spite of such pressing needs we are encouraged that the light still shines in the darkness.  Because of the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, there is hope for the healing of children in Beslan, for the thousands of street children of Russia, for the children in overcrowded orphanages. 

      It is a privilege to help provide training for the Christian children’s workers like Gehrman and Madina and many others we met who are ministering to Chechen refugee children in Nalchik, kids on the street strung out on drugs, young people in prison. There is not room in this letter to tell all the heart stirring stories we heard of lives turned around by the saving power of Christ and of the risks believers take in order to extend the love of Christ to others in the south of Russia.

       We have invited Phyllis Kilbourn to return a year from now, to train teachers who will be able to teach the “Offering Healing and Hope for Children in Crisis” course which she has developed.  By that time Narnia Center will have completely translated and will have prepared for publication her entire training manual.

      For more information about PC(USA) relief efforts in Beslan or to make a donation to that work through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, visit the Web site www.pcusa.org/pda/response/europe/beslanindex-102104.htm; or make a donation through regular church channels marking it for “Disaster Response — Russia/2000089.

      For more information about the Marsdens’ ministry in Russia, visit the Web site www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/profiles/marsdend.htm.

(Information for this story furnished to the Presbyterian News Service by Gary D. Payton, the Worldwide Ministries Division’s regional liaison for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland.)