A letter from Bob and Stacy Bronkema in Russia
May 25, 2009
A day in the life of the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy
Dear Family and Friends,
Thursday, May 7.
9:00 a.m. Mike Muraoka and Kifle Solomon, two of our volunteers, went to Metro Supermarket to pick up about 300 dollars worth of gived food to give out at the soup kitchen after the clients had eaten their hot meal.
10:00 a.m. Bob met a DHL driver to load gived clothes that Bob picked up from the U.S. embassy that morning. The DHL driver then took the clothes to our Parish Center.
10:00 a.m. The Parish Center medical clinic opened its doors. Dr. Brink and Dr. Olga visited patients, while Marceline helped as a nurse, and Larissa met and greeted patients. They saw about 20 patients that day.
1:30 p.m. A FLOTUS team came to the soup kitchen. They are a team that works with the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, to make sure that any potential site she might visit is safe. While we were meeting with them, a truck from Campbell Soup arrived with 13,000 packets of soup to be unloaded and given out. It was a tremendous donation. Laura Stagl was there to organize the distribution, and by 3:30 the truck was gone and so was FLOTUS (we have since heard that the First Lady will not be making a visit to MPC).
6:30 p.m. The German embassy’s deputy chief of mission had a dinner and concert in honor of all the charities that work with the embassy. We were invited, and Bob attended. We were honored to take part.
What a busy Thursday! What a great team of people doing amazing work. While not every day is as exciting as this one, God has surely blessed this ministry with variety.
The highlight had to be the FLOTUS team visit. They decided against visiting us because they didn’t want to shine a spotlight upon our organization, which works with so many refugees and undocumented people. They were afraid there might be bad repercussions from the Russian authorities if they visited. We were encouraged to know that we made it onto the White House’s radar screen.
Biracial children ministry
We have recently started a new program in a city called Ryazan about four hours outside of Moscow. Here in Moscow we work with 50 families that have biracial children. These children are mercilessly abused by their peers in school and around town. You’ve never seen anything like it. In Ryazan, there is a similar organization, and we are partnering with Ellen Smith, a fellow PC(USA) missionary, to help another 50 families. We provide bags filled with groceries for them once a month. We would absolutely love it if a church would join us in this program and help defray some of the expenses. We’ll tell you how at the end of this letter.
Sponsors
We have received some wonderful corporate sponsors. DHL here in Russia has agreed to help us twice a week with a vehicle to support some of our ministries. Campbell’s Soup has agreed to give thousands of packets of soup (In Moscow, packaged soup comes in packets, not cans.) for our soup kitchen and other ministries. Campina dairy gived three tons of yogurt every quarter. Metro Supermarket gives free food to us twice a week, and Auchan grocery store has gived containers. The U.S. embassy has gived a fairly new Toyota Land Cruiser to help with all the pick-up and drop-off of groceries. We are really beginning to get our foot in the door with these big companies. As a result, we have hired a person to oversee our new food bank, which we hope will provide quite a bit of food to people who are desperate in this economic crisis.
Medical clinic
The work of the medical clinic continues to grow. We have gone from one day to two, and now we have not only hired a doctor but a nurse as well. We had a long, serious discussion at council regarding whether we should expand it. Bob calculated how much had come in this year already for the medical clinic and how much we had spent, and wouldn’t you know that almost to the dollar it evened out. That is the way God works. We have seen God provide faithfully and constantly for this ministry.
The death of a friend
This spring a tragedy struck MPC. One of the pillars of our community, a woman from Ghana named Veronica, died at her home in front of her teenage son. Veronica had been a member of MPC for nearly 20 years. She was on staff and did everything you could imagine—from serving in the soup kitchen to being a nurse at the medical clinic. As a result of her death, her son Emmanuel, was orphaned. He stayed with us for a week and is now staying with a friend as he gets his paperwork in order in hopes of attending a university here in Moscow. For us it was another realization of how difficult life is here for the person of color.
Family news
Bob and Stacy were able to take a week away from Moscow when Bob’s mom came to watch the kids. We went to Turkey to attend a church conference, and it was absolutely amazing. We saw many of the churches to whom John wrote the letters in the Book of Revelation. It was a great time for us to get away, the first time we’ve been away from the kids for more than two days in the last 15 years, and the kids loved having Grandma to themselves for a whole week.
The kids’ last day of school is Friday, and we can’t believe that we will soon have an 8th, 6th, and 4th grader. Rachel has become very active in church with all the preparations for the youth mission trip to Italy. She has loved school and has some great friends. In fact, when we were talking about our term ending in 2011 she started looking for friends’ homes where she could stay in order to graduate from Hinkson Christian Academy. She is convinced that she will figure out a way to stay in Russia.
Naomi has joined the running club at school. While she remains the fastest girl in elementary, a couple of the boys have caught her, and she is determined to remedy this. She has had a great year academically and socially, largely as a result of her teacher. He has been a tremendous source of inspiration for her, and for us as well. She looks forward to the summer when she can see some of her cousins and enjoy Washington state for an extended period.
Bethany continues to excel in school and sang her first solo in the spring concert. She has developed quite a love for origami and can make almost anything out of folded paper.
We have been so blessed by your generosity as individuals and as churches. So many of you have given at a rate that far exceeded our expectations. At your request, these funds have gone toward the support of our family’s position here in Moscow. If any of you wish to redirect your giving to the work of the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy this would also be a wonderful way to support mission in Russia and specifically the social ministry of MPC. You can do that in a number of ways. Online you can click on the “give“ button below and follow the steps to give either by credit card or even direct deposit. [See the Give box in the left column to give online —Ed.]
On the memo portion of the check put Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy and E047943.
We want to thank you again for your tremendous generosity. It has been very humbling. We hope to write to you again before we head out to Washington state for a few weeks this summer. Thanks for being a part of our lives.
We remain your servants in Christ,
The Bronkema family
Bob, Stacy, Rachel, Naomi and Bethany (and Rosie)
P.S. Please note that we have eliminated the bbronkema@cs.com address and now you can find us at bbronkema@gmail.com.
The 2009 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 177
