Counseling training breakthrough

Since early summer I have been meeting with a group every Monday evening in our home to go through some training that has just recently become available in Russian in prayer ministry. I like prayer ministry, though not to the exclusion of other kinds of counseling (which I also teach) because it is a way of allowing the Holy Spirit to directly speak to the issue a person is facing. It also can have a very quick and dramatic impact on the person for the same reason. More information about it is here.

The plan is to take a year to go through a video series, twice, and to practice together with each other to gain confidence and build the skills and sensitivity to God's leading as we go. Some of the students just started in October, but I decided we were already ready for some work in groups last week. I put them in sets of 3 to practice asking good questions of each other. What amazed me was that, in every group, they went beyond what I had asked or expected, and they started really ministering to each other with some wonderful results.

Here are the comments of one person taking the training, who is on staff at the Harbor:

Generally I am very glad that there is such a ministry! There is an opportunity to communicate with like-minded people!
1. It helps me better understand God and how He acts.
2. I'd become aware that people actually can help more often than we think
3. In some cases, I have the freedom to help myself [through prayer]
4. If I had small children, I could save them from many false beliefs that could have an adverse affect on them
5. In me was more understanding, compassion for others. I think more about how what you say or do can affect others.

Another long-time student of mine wrote this to me:

These classes helped me find inner peace, which helps me in ministering to people and understanding God. Spiritual Formation becomes more understandable when you take no responsibility for others' feelings. Pessimistic Christianity rejects feelings as not necessary and too elementary for spiritual life. In fact, the more you realize that God will heal, the more you want to serve Him. I realized that only God can enter into the past and heal wounds. This affects all spheres of life. I have become more confident, can understand people better, and hopefully cam help them learn more effectively. Thank you, Lyle, and the people who sponsor you, because we are able to understand better God's healing and His ministry to people. Thank you very much. God bless you!

The need for Russian adoptions

It's too early to spill the beans, but MIR is about to undergo some big changes, and I am excited about the potential to take the ministry to another level of effectiveness and impact in the city. Meanwhile, I'll put out some teasers to seed vision for what is needed as we move forward with these changes.

This is a quote from a site about a ministry called Light of Love that I don't know but need to get to know soon. They are interested in the question of preparing Russian families for foster care and adoption. So is MIR - not directly, but in helping foster momentum, training, and networks to that end. Here are some data that support the need:

In January, 2007 the Russian government enacted a law that is significantly impacting orphans. It calls for overhauling the country’s child welfare system by shifting from an orphanage system to a foster care/adoption system. Ideally, this is a positive step because clearly it is better for orphans to be in families than in institutions. However, there are some key roadblocks:

1) The timing: the government plans on closing down 70% of orphanages in the next 3 years. There are over 800,000 orphans in institutions in Russia. It is not feasible to successfully place that number of children into families in such a short timeframe.

2) The lack of screening: The Russian government is doing very little to screen potential foster / adoptive families, and is instead offering a lump sum of money up front to anyone who will take in a child.

3) The lack of training: The Russian government is providing very little in the way of foster parent or pre-adoption training to interested families.

Additionally, as orphanages are being closed, international adoptions from Russia have virtually come to a halt. The combination of these two events puts Russian orphans in a desperate situation. It is critical that stable Russian families become equipped to adopt and foster orphans.

Mere MIR

I should give you a better idea of what I am doing at MIR and at least a sense of what impact my efforts are having, although it is still early to see much fruit. I have been spending about a day a week there since April. My early history with MIR is recounted here. Recently, Masha, the executive director, wrote some about what she has appreciated about my service there:

-Lyle helped me to articulate my concers, suggestiona and conclusions better for the Board and our partners at the time I was under much stress and emotion-Lyle was there during a very difficult key conference phonecall with our partner's board, guiding and summing things up
-Lyle accompanied me to Estonia for a meeting with directors and officials who really needed to hear the truth about our program after much confusion
-Lyle put the services of MIR in a very clever chart and edited the current agreement of mutual cooperation form, so it corresponds with our current situation better
All of these as much as being stressful were also good learning experiences where I could see how to react in stressful situation, be able to see above the current conflict, invite God in at the rush of the moment.

I'm always looking forward to our visits even if I'm in a difficult state, because talking it through has potential for getting out of a deadend.

I'm still learning how to prioritize things, how to chose what to focus on, how to plan our training session topics ahead to make them more productive in shorter time and how to invite God into my life. Clearly Lyle has contributed to these areas of my growth.

MIR is in a unique position in the city as a hub for discussion and activity around care of at-risk children generally, and orphans particularly. Despite going through a tough season right now, I see a lot of potential for emerging from this time as an even stronger player who can serve in a key role between ministries, orphanages, churches, and Western organizations and volunteers. So the days ahead are a time for re-defining who MIR is -the mere MIR - and seeking God's path forward. To that end, pray with us.

A perfect trip

Our recent CRM conference in Langkawi, Malaysia eludes a perfect description -- at least from me (Diana). But there is one aspect I will attempt to share with you, and this about "perfection."

When one travels, one should never, ever expect a perfect trip. Although most of us would include in our definition of travel perfection: no delays, comfortable seats, tasty food, no running through the airports, no hassles at the borders, and no lost luggage. Our forty-four hour nightmarish journey to the island of Langkawi only included the very last item, so by most definitions, our trip was far from perfect. Lyle blogged about the crazy details, and I encourage any reader to click on over to the nightmares coming and returning.

At every turn we faced a glaring lack of perfection, and I was finally brought to tears when our last, seemingly impossible

situation of making our connecting flight in Kuala Lampur actually worked in our favor. I felt utter, sold-out, beyond-words gratitude when we arrived safe and sound. I don't know if I would have felt that complete sense of gratitude without having the trials, and having been brought to that level of helplessness and hopelessness was part of a bigger plan by our perfect God to show me reliance on Him.

Perfection insight #1: I can't do it alone.

Our first afternoon I took a quiet stroll by myself on the beach enjoying the shell hunting and warm waves on my feet. My grandmother instilled the love of shells and their intricacies when I was very young, and, to my delight, I remembered every name of shell she ever taught me. As I smoothed the sand from one spiral shell in my palm, I realized I could not see the design very clearly. And, as is more common these days, I had to actually remove my glasses in order to see the awesome colors and patterns close up. Marveling at this tiny masterpiece that probably nobody else in the world will ever see, I heard one of God's lessons for me: "You must take off your idea of perfection (my glasses) in order to see my beauty and perfection." Whoa. I could have gone home after that revelation! No conference needed!

Perfection insight #2: My ideas of perfection are seriously flawed.

Lastly, one of my favorite moments of the conference was when some forty people representing the different countries where CRM serves (ex-pats and nationals) read scripture related to our conference theme. They processed one after the other up a center aisle to the microphone to read in their native language or the language of their host country. The scripture in English and their language was on the big screen. It was powerful! Sure, we hear dozens of foreign tongues just walking through the airports, but this was completely different. There was such beauty in the patchwork of languages, and to hear them all one after the other without pause was amazing in a way I had never experienced. Of course, this is just a taste of heaven when God's perfection is complete for us to enjoy.

Perfection insight #3: We have no clue what God's perfect plan will look like when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Lydia's plea

Lydia started tearing up tonight as I put her to bed (when we always have our best conversations, though they drag on much too long!) as she began telling me about the plight of the little Christian school where they all attend part time. It suffers from two (no doubt) related matters: first, she and a friend once counted the number of children at the school without a father at home to be about a third of the entire body. Second, the one and only male teacher got married and moved away this summer.

What hurts her so much is not only missing the man, but more so feeling the pain of these other children in not having a male influence in their lives. There is such an orphan spirit on these kids, and she feels it. Weeping, she pleaded with me to pray about coming to teach at least one class there. "I know they would have the deepest respect for you, and you are such a cool guy and a great dad. They need that so much, Daddy." She went on to give all the reasons why it would fit within my mandate to raise up leaders, and I couldn't say a word in opposition. "Just because they are kids, doesn't mean you can't raise them up as leaders, right?"

The leaders of the school have already pleaded with me to teach a Bible class, and I told them what I told Lydia: I want to teach those who can teach them." Problem is, there are no such men. WHERE ARE THE MEN???

It's a question that eats at me often. Now the thought of my daughter's troubled plea will too.

Some notes on foster care and prevention

While at Hope Children's Village yesterday, I got to talk with our hostess' neighbor Ira, who also has 7 children, some biological, and some under foster care. I asked the two of them some questions about the state of foster care in Russia, and they turned out to be a good source, as they teach a 6 week course for new foster families that this region (essentially a county, Gatchina) offers. Ira told me that when she and her husband started taking in children in 2004, they were the 2nd family in the entire county of 200,000 to have EVER done so!

We talked about why so few Russians do this kind of thing. Several opinions came out, including the obvious lack of concern for children that such a reality implies. But they also pointed out that, whereas in the West, it seems to be common knowledge that there are so many orphans in Russia and the former communist block, Russians themselves hardly knew a thing about it until just very recently. There weren't even so much as newspaper articles about the plight of abused and neglected children. And the progress? From 2 families in 2004 to now just under 60 foster families in 2010.

I asked about prevention? The government office supposedly over such matters, "Social Defense" actually does nothing of the sort. They just process paperwork. So, whereas in the states and other Western countries there is the not infrequent problem of taking children away from homes for spurious reasons (often related to homeschooling), in Russia children are not saved from dangerous homes until much later than should have been the case.

And what about efforts to rehabilitate families who have had children taken away? The rule is, when your kids get taken, it's not for good at first. It's for 6 months. You've got that long to prove yourself worthy to have them back. Does a social worker help you do that? Are you offered classes? Are you forced or even offered to do anything? Not at all. For an irresponsible family in a country that is plagued with passivity, it's like asking them to go get a doctorate in a foreign language. So it doesn't happen. And so the roles of orphans grow each year, and 90% of them are "social orphans" which means they actually have a family, as opposed to a real orphan.

The state is dead set on reversing this trend, though. Problem is, it doesn't know how. So in typical Russian style, they do clever things like this one (reported to me by Andrei, our man at MIR responsible for growing the U.S. hosting program): Novgorod has a beautiful and relatively new orphanage in the center of town. Trouble is, it's closed. I say trouble, because there are no fewer orphans. The administration just moved them out into three other orphanages in the country - facilities that are correspondingly spartan. But the great news is that Novgorod can now say that they have no more orphanages -the last one is closed! What brilliance! Thinking about the rewards they will reap in that Great Day just takes your breath away.

The other strategy is moving the kids into foster care. Sounds good, right? This is what other countries, most notably, the U.S. has done. There aren't any orphanages in the states. We take care of kids through foster care. And it is certainly far from a perfect system. My own mother worked as a social worker with families who had lost parental rights (but she helped them get them back!) and with foster families to help them succeed too. My mother has no counter part here, as near as I can tell.

Ira told me that not only so, but that of the 15 counties in the "state" (oblast) of Leningrad (which surrounds St. Petersburg), only three of them even offer this class to foster families that she teaches. Otherwise, they just have to fill out the paperwork and they are good to go. (So kudos to Gatchina, not only for seeing the need to teach this class, but also because they were the only region willing to give the land to Hope for the children's village. The others couldn't believe that in the motives of the group enough to consider helping.)

The results are predictable, though the extent is horrendous: 30,000 children in the last three years inside Russia were sent back to institutions by their adoptive, foster or guardianship families. Little Yulia that I wrote about meeting at Natasha's was a casualty of that statistic, but Yulia is as happy as can be. "Love covers a multitude of sins."

These are the kinds of things that force me to pray and work towards change at both the micro and macro levels. I'm asking the Lord for strategies to reach the family, particularly the husbands/men, and for access to the high places and the gates where decisions are made. Working at one or the other would be otherwise futile.

Hope Children's Village

Today we visited a most unusual community, artificially created around a theme. If that weren't unusual enough here, the theme is even more so: foster care. Some rich Russians actually got together with a heart to do the right thing, and created a foundation, and this community is the result.

There are currently 10 families living in 5 duplexes along one street, all of whom have taken in at least 2 foster children. My friend and colleague Yan, who heads up a national prison ministry here, invited the family to go with his family to visit one of these families. To see some footage of the Hope Children's Village, you can see a TV report about it here. I regret not having had our camera with us. It was an hour by metro, then another hour by car to get there.

We were greeted by Yulia, the sweetest little 5 year old imaginable, especially considering that she had been in two other foster families and rejected by both. Immediately behind her were oodles of more children, and then mother Natasha. Talk about your dictionary definition of amazing; Natasha is it. She only started moving in the direction of foster care AFTER having 4 kids of her own, and AFTER her husband completely abandoned the family, including any form of child support.

Ironically, her three foster kids are either older or younger than the other four. Vanya, the 18 month old, is the most amazing story. Born to alcoholic parents, who had already become regular suppliers for the state orphanage system, Vanya came along a full three months premature. As such, he was actually considered a miscarriage, and the mother did not even have to sign any papers to relinquish him to the state. She and the hospital just left him to die.

A week later, having not died (!), the baby became a person legally (behold the power of the state to regulate life), and so all of a sudden had to be cared for. His medical issues were legion (Cerebral Palsy, or some such issue, fluid on the brain, a tumor on the skull, etc.), however, and so by even the time a few months later when Natasha took him, well-meaning staff told her it was pointless to take in a child that was soon to die anyway. The one issue he did not have, which the doctor said she had never seen in such cases, was Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Natasha took Vanya from the hospital straight to her church before coming home, where they prayed fervently for the child. And the result: Vanya is essentially 100% healed and normal.

How does she survive? The home was provided by the foundation for as long as she has foster children. It was furnished by church members and others whom God touched. She receives about $330 a month support from the state (essentially welfare) for her own kids, and each of the three foster kids bring in barely $200. Somehow, she makes it on less than $1000 a month.

The program, though private, is not Christian. Five of the 10 families are, however. This is most significant, considering a general population of less than 1% Christian. These 5 all gather weekly for prayer and mutual support. Some other friends of ours, Nadia and Yan, helped them organize this summer a mini camping experience as a Christian outreach to the other families. It was a powerful success with all the kids, and in helping build relationships among the children and the adults. It was amazing for me to learn that in a community of 10 families where they all had something as significant in common as this, they didn't even talk with each other before the camp. (But why should I be too surprised? I barely have been able to get to know my own neighbors after three years here.)

The event almost didn't take place, thanks to the fearless leadership of a certain member of that noble class of warriors, known as a bureaucrat. I forget the details that Nadia told me, but they worked it out at the last minute. But this Orthodox hero of the faith would not give up her pursuit of keeping Russia clean of infidels. She invited an Orthodox priest to come to a parent meeting and asked him to put these sectarians in their place. His response? He rebuked the bureaucrat for her concerns, said it would be a travesty to stop what the families are trying to do, and told her they are following in the same historic Christian faith as she supposedly does.

The group is now in partnership with this man of radical faith. They are also looking for someone to come be a pastor to the community. Any takers? The size of the community is set to double soon with the opening of several new homes being built.

P.S. Some ideas for short term teams:
1. Come help organize another, and possibly longer, summer camp for the kids.
2. Take the kids on field trips to the city or elsewhere. Public transportation for Natasha's family to the city (she can't afford a car) is about $50 round trip, not to mention whatever the event costs are.
3. Organize events, seminars, etc. for the parents or whole families.
4. The shared playground is very sparse and overrun with weeds. Someone, pleas, build them a real playground.
5. A friend of Natasha's drew her up a wonderful plan for landscaping her yard, to include fruit trees and a garden for the kids. It awaits labor and money. No doubt others have similar needs, but Natasha's are acute since there is no man to do it.

More on the broader issues of foster care in this post.