Preschool children’s home in Mozyr is the only establishment of a kind throughout Gomel region. Situated 70 km away from Chernobyl, Mozyr town has been severely affected by the catastrophe. The children’s home is located at picturesque surroundings, and looks very homey, but tragically, the level of radioactive contamination is high here (15 ku/sq/km). There are 85 children ranging in age from 2 to 7 years here, says Irina Ivanauna the Director of the children’s home (photo). Their number varies because of many kids going to foster families. For example, 60 kids were taken by foster parents last year. Children from troubled families and those abandoned by their parents go to the Mozyr House of Child, and then the kids having serious psychophysical problems are sent to the children’s home. Incredible though it may appear, there is a family with 13 (!) children whose parents are chronic alcoholics with no job. All these poor kids are now at children homes and boarding schools. One three-year-old boy from this family weighed 9 kg when he got to the House of Child. Now he has put on weight and keeps on maturing. All the inmates of the children’s home are affected by some disease or other. There are 9 children having different degrees of psychophysical deviations, 11 kids who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, the rest suffer from various pathologies of cardio-vascular system, visual organs etc. The children are operated on (heart surgeries, visual organs surgeries, abdominal surgeries etc) for the sake of improving their state of health, and this year 37 operations had been carried out. Speech defects are attributes of all the children there. There are two kids born from AIDS-infected mothers, but miraculously preserved from that deadly disease. The health state of the children is largely a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe. The inmates of children homes suffer from so called “boarding school syndrome”, which means that they grow up ill-fitted for making their own life. They have no area to be responsible for, make no decision, and so remain infantile and immature even when grown-up. They lack confidence in themselves, get scared easily, and are nervous. Apart from medical, psychological and pedagogical aid the children need spiritual help as well, and we hope that the spiritual literature presented to the children’s home (photo) will help the teachers and nurses to get the truths of life and love across to the children desperately needing love. Mozyr correction-and-exercise training and rehabilitation center is founded in 2001 for the purpose of rendering physiological and pedagogical help to the children having psychophysiological deviations. 25 kids of school age, 8 preschool children, and 50 children with serious speech disorders are the patients of the center. Their articulation is very poor, and one can understand just about 20% of their speech, but the training they receive at the center considerably improves their articulation, bringing the level of clearly spoken words up to 80%. Natalya the teacher (photo) was very thankful to have received the books from the Bible Society. The albums for coloring and Christian ABCs will help the children develop their mental abilities and tell them about God and His love. Dasha (photo on the right) is blind from birth and weak in intellect. The nurses will read aloud to her, and we believe the Spirit of God will work in her heart. Slava (photo on the left), 13, suffers from Dawn syndrome. His grandma cares for him, because his mother has left him and started a new family. At the center he is taught to speak and communicate with others. We pray for these poor children that they come to know God and feel His love, as they are bearing their heavy cross from the sins of the adults.