Pasha

...just want to write about a conversation we had today with one of our friends while it is fresh in my mind…our friend is Pasha, one of the little older gals that stands outside our building. She stands there with other older gals selling vegetables that they have grown in their gardens or other foodstuffs that they have made. She was all alone today and so we were able to stay and talk for a while. She had promised to bring a book that was published about her village. Well, in her haste this morning, she forgot to bring it with her, but she began her story all the same. She said that several years ago, a correspondent came to her village and asked her why her mother was sent to prison, leaving her children to fend for themselves.
This is the story…
When Pasha was 8 years old there was a famine. This was a result of the general disorder of the war in 1944. She and her family lived in a small village somewhere outside of Kiev. She was the oldest child in her family and had younger brothers. They didn’t have proper clothing and shoes as times were desperate. The village folk worked at a collective farm, it was her mother’s job to weed 2 rows of beets. Pasha went with her mother to work, and had her own row that she weeded. At the end of the day, they received a ladle full of animal feed as pay for that days work. People were dying of starvation in her village. Pasha one day looked at the peas growing in the field next to the beet field she worked in and, unable to resist, she stole 3 peapods. The field boss saw her do this and she was taken to the collective farm boss. She was released, but that night her mother never came home. Her Aunt came and told her to gather her things and come with her because her mother had been put in jail. Her mother was sentenced to 5 years of labor in a mine…basically prison. Pasha went to live with her mother’s father and her brothers were sent to an orphanage. (Her father had never come home from the war; he never would.) Her grandpa said he wanted to keep Pasha, that there was no need to send her to an orphanage, ‘she might as well feed the cows’ was his argument. She also went to school, but she often cried away class time as she felt sorry for her situation.

Her mother was released after 4 years. Someone read the reason why she was sent to prison and decided that she could be released. Her brothers were returned to her mother, but Pasha stayed with her grandfather.
Pasha is now 70-ish years old, she is someone that God loves. She is one of the people we know and are beginning to love in Kiev, she is one of many people with a heartbreaking story. Please pray that we can help our new friends here find Christ and experience His love and healing in their lives.