FINDING LOVE AND COURAGE IN A RUSSIAN FOSTER HOME

Hello all! I am so excited to bring you this news. Two days ago a few of my teammates as well as myself went to visit a foster home home here in Russia.  I was not sure what I was getting myself into other than going visit some kids that were in need, and needed to at least smile.  To my surprise this place was really nice and well equipped.

The manager of the facility was super nice, and her husband was a true Kursk Basketball fan. She shared with us how much she had to listen to him after our games until around 1 o'clock in the morning, and while sharing how excited her husband was he then called LOL. He wanted to make sure that we had made it. Then after hanging up with him she began to inform us about how things work around there. The phone rings again, it was her husband -- LOL, wanting to wish us a good luck. It was so funny and cute.

Anyways this is what is learned about the facility, (keep in mind I was getting everything translated and was trying to keep up) but I know I enjoyed every minute of what I saw and learned while we were there.

Here is a little information that I was about to gather while touring:
The facility houses 149 kids. It has 300 workers, and a psychologist that the kids can speak with when needed.

Of the 100 kids at least 80 find homes which I think is amazing; some are only here temperaily if their home is unstable and once it gets back right then the kids are able to return back to their homes.
They use to allow Americans  to adopt but their was an accident that occurred after one of the adoptions with the family and that kind of slowed that process down to almost not even really occuring anymore.

Most of the handicap kids  are adopted by foreigners mainly for medical purposes but I think that it is amazing to try and get the kids the medical attention that they truly need.

In this facility they also do something that I think is really helpful;they mix the normal kids as well as handicap kids together so they can learn from each other and not feel any different than anyone else around them.

The babies that we saw that were 0-6 months and are usually the ones that are given up for adoption but they were placed in such cute little beds amongst one another.
Something else that they do in the home is try to make it very family oriented. They help the kids to know and understand what having a mother, grandmother, or sister is like. So the younger workers that work there are called their sisters, the middle age workers are the mothers, and the older workers are called the grandmothers. 

Most of the workers that were there were not real professionals but they were women that were truly great with kids. I will be returning there to see them all again as well as bring some of my children books to them, they were very excited about that. It was a great experience for me and I am so happy that we went.

Here is a video news report:


You can also see more pics on my Facebook page: http://goo.gl/qujYK