Breakfast, lunch, dinner, repeat

I imagine you would love the orphans at Rudensk, in Belarus. All 130 of them.

But you wouldn’t want to feed them. You couldn’t.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, multiplied by 130 ... so we’re up to 390 meals a day.

And some of the kids, because of their medical conditions, have to eat 5 times, not 3 times, every day.

But there’s a small, dedicated team of (camera-shy) workers at the boarding school...

And this is their life’s work.

Sadly, they’re laboring with decades-old equipment — rusty, unreliable, inadequate.

The stovetop control-knob numbers wore off years ago; they’ve been painted back on by hand.

With Christmas approaching, I asked the team what they’d wish for.

I can assure you, none of them asked for jewelry.

Their deepest desire is simply better tools for feeding the orphans.

To prepare and serve hundreds of meals a day, you really need what you and I would call a “commercial kitchen.”

Appliances for processing meat and vegetables and baked goods.

A 25-cu.ft. freezer. A 50-cu.ft. fridge.

They need scales for weighing ingredients.

Even replacing their ancient meat grinder would be a blessing.

Their entire “Christmas list” came to $5400.

I know we just recently finished our Thanksgiving campaign, meds for the children at Osipovichi...

So maybe we can’t check off everything on the kitchen workers’ list by Christmas Day.

But I told them I would ask.

If you’d like to offer a Christmas gift of love to the orphans with disabilities at Rudensk — by helping the kitchen workers at the boarding school — I’d be honored to have your help.

• I think of $108 as a lot to spend on a Christmas gift, but with that kind of donation, you could be 1 of 50 friends to meet the entire challenge.

• Or maybe give $54 and let me combine your gift with someone else’s.

• Of course, any gift, large or small, will make a real difference — for the workers, and the children.

And as always, if the entire need is met, any extra gifts will still go entirely into Belarus, because we’re all-volunteer on the U.S. side.

I’m grateful you would consider this need.

In any case, thanks for journeying with New Thing!

Much love,

Doug Brendel

(Photos by Oleg Yarovenko)