The head of social work (for security reasons we can't mention the name) among children and socially vulnerable people in a city in Kazakhstan, says:
For several years, Misha lived as a street child. At night, he crawled into hiding down the shafts with heating pipes to keep warm and find shelter. He lived by begging and stealing, and every day was a struggle for survival.
Misha's devastating beginning
Right: Food distribution to poor children in 1998
Down in the heat pipe shafts lived many children like Misha. They found food and clothes in garbage cans. Almost all the street children smoked cigarettes, and many of them consumed alcohol and sniffed glue or other poisonous substances that they either stole or bought with things they had stolen. Many of the children suffered varying degrees of brain damage, and Misha also suffered a brain injury that God later miraculously healed him of.
Misja's one-year younger brother, Taras, had also lived as a street child, but now mostly lived in an orphanage, which was in very poor condition and where the children had poor conditions.
Most of the time he was at the orphanage, and other times he lived with Misja down in the shafts by the heating pipes.
Taras wasn't addicted to drugs and alcohol like his older brother and occasionally stayed at home with his parents, who were both alcoholics.
An abusive father
That was also the reason why the boys had run away from home. Especially because the father became extremely violent when he had been drinking. There was almost no food in the home, and they received no support or care, so they ended up on the streets like so many other children.
Help from Christians
Right: Marina with Misja, Tara, their mother and sister in 1998
Then one day in the winter of 1998, Taras, who was now 14 years old, heard about a church that distributed food to disadvantaged children, and he took his brother Misha with him. But when Misja entered the church, where there were over a hundred hungry children like himself, he was scared because he trusted no one, except his own brother. So after quickly eating his soup with bread, he ran away again. This continued month after month, and often Misha wouldn't even go to church because of fear.
This continued for about 2 years. Taras came faithfully to meals, where he also heard Bible stories and about Jesus, but Misha came to church only very rarely.
Taras goes to school
In the winter of 2000, the head of the social work department established a closer relationship with Taras and took him to the church's small independent school, where he learned reading, writing and math. Misha was still living as a street child down in the heat shaft. Together with Taras, Marina would often go down to visit Misha in the heat shaft or to pick him up so he could be fed and washed. But the boy was so shy and scared that he would immediately run away again, and when she gave him something, he would quickly grab it and run away.
"I felt like a mother to the two children. It was as if they were my own. I just had to help them, that's how I felt" says Marina.
A new life begins
In 2001, Taras, now 16 years old, gave his life to Jesus. That same year, contact was made with Misha and Taras' parents, who were still deeply alcoholic, and the father eventually promised that he wouldn't beat the boys anymore. So Taras moved home, and the head of social work visited him almost every day. Misha had started to come out of her hiding place by the heating pipes and started coming to church almost every week. She spent countless hours teaching him to read and write, and slowly he was able to start reading the Bible himself.
To the right: Misja and Tara's lives have been radically changed. The image is from 2012.
In 2002, Misha also came home to his parents and that same year he gave his life to Jesus. "When Jesus first came into my life, he just became everything to me, and then things went fast because God changed me," says Misha.
A service begins
The very next year, in October 2004, Misha attended Bible school in the city of Almaty.
"I just had such a strong desire to learn more about God and to serve Jesus," says Misja.
In 2005 he came back and immediately started helping with the church's social work.
That same year, in 2005, his brother Taras attended Bible school in Almaty and returned home in 2006 to serve God in his hometown.
Today, Misja is 27 years old and both he and his brother Taras serve in the church's social work and are very loyal supporters. "They are almost indispensable to me in my ministry now," says the social work leader.
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