ISP Team in Russia Bonds With Orphans

August 4, 2008—When International Service Project team members from California Baptist University trek to foreign countries, they often go with the intent of making a difference in others’ lives. They often do, as was the recent case with the Russia “B” team that spent three weeks with orphans in a state-run facility in St. Petersburg in July. Yet, U.S. team members often return stateside changed forever, and may feel they have left a piece of themselves behind.
 
“While we were there, our hearts were aching for these children whose fates were caught up in the system,” Maryann Pearson, ISP team leader and CBU faculty member, said. “Many of the children are never returned to their families, or adopted by families, but remain in state institutions until they are about 18.”
 
One orphan, in particular, captured her heart, Professor Pearson, said: A little girl whose head was shaved in preparation for her transfer to a remote orphanage to perhaps live out her youth within a state institution.
 
Pearson explained that most of the orphans are placed in the state-run facilities while their parents are embroiled in legal issues, or cannot take care of the children.  The St. Petersburg facility was clean and well-run, Pearson said, but the children housed there, if not abandoned by their relatives, may simply be victims of a harsh political system.
 
“Very often the legal issues were not related to parental criminal offenses and improper paper work, but rather, by questions about ethnic parentage.”
 
In addition to housing orphans, the facility that CBU’s ISP worked with provides transitional housing for runaways. Sunergos International, a non-profit that connects such teams to Russian facilities to help orphans, runaways, widows and the poor, provided translators and other critical services for the CBU team.
 
According to Pearson, seven orphans accepted the Lord during the ISP’s teams’ stay.
 

Maryann Pearson, assistant professor of communications and education, said she left a little piece of her heart with this young Russian girl who left for an uncertain fate during the ISP team’s visit.

CBU Professor Maryann Pearson (third from left, standing), was joined in St. Petersburg by student leader Kendra Lingle  (far right, standing) and a team of eight other students including Amanda Sheridan, Elena Antichevich, Kassia Wisniewski, Katie Benitez, Michael Sampson, Scott McCollum; Stephen Thomas, and Tamara Cruz. The team participated in skits, crafts, projects and sports activities with Russian orphans for three weeks in July.

Scott McCollum, a CBU sophomore, confessed his heart was captured by this little fellow at the state-run orphanage in Russia.