Note: We are bringing new voices to the blog over the coming weeks. This post was written by Misha Edigarev, our dear friend in Slobodskoy. Misha is one of two disciplers at the orphanage and our main connection with the kids. He is married and the father of an adorable little boy, Denis. He is a tremendous role model of family for the kids, a father figure at the orphanage, and a great friend to all of us. Here are his thoughts:

“And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?”  And he looked up and said, “I see men; but they look like trees, walking.”
Mark 8:23

We were given this scripture by Christi to snatch the most striking idea or word from, to ponder it over and then express it into reality back at our reflection time down in the hotel lobby one rainy morning last October. I remember I was fascinated by the image of people, looking like walking trees, that the blind man could see. I didn’t understand why they resembled trees in his still weak eyes. Maybe his eyes missed the beauty of nature so much that he wished to see trees better than people…

I didn’t speak my mind at that meeting but kept swirling a mysterious picture of those walking trees in my imagination all day until it finally dawned upon me that it is our amazing American friends who are like walking trees for the Slobodskoy orphans! Because the kids’ hearts miss love just as much as the blind man’s eyes missed light and beauty…

The orphans grow like flowers in the big garden carefully watered, fertilized and trimmed by the caregivers and teachers who are also like trees growing with them in this garden and protecting them from the cruel sun, heavy rains and severe frosts. There are so many gardens like this in Russia!  All the flowers growing there need to seek shelter and hope that they will have a chance to blossom. But will they stay beautiful forever or will they have to fade or intermingle with weeds and never blossom? Who knows?

I truly want them to reach for the sky like the trees that surround them do. And especially the fantastic overseas trees that come back to the garden from very distant but yet so close forests every year and bring a lot of fun, joy, happiness and love!

Thank you, guys, for your love for our children!

Misha with the kids in the spring

Misha and Koss (another interpreter) with Vlad

Misha outside our Slobodskoy hotel