In our most recent newsletter we shared an update about Dennis Bandilko, a young man we’ve known for many years – since he was a little kid at Orphanage No. 4 (no longer open).
In September of 2012, Dennis was playing soccer with some guys and suddenly fell down, unconscious. In the following days we learned that he had had an aneurysm; in the hospital he had a second aneurysm, and nearly bled out during surgery.
Through this whole process the Last Bell staff took care of him: first making sure he got emergency care as fast as possible (even so, the Zhtyomyr medical doctors waited over a weekend – while Dennis’s brain was bleeding – to transfer him to Kyiv); staying with him while he went by ambulance to Kyiv and had surgery; literally running around Kyiv to pick up medical supplies for his emergency surgery; and in the months that followed, taking care of him as he recovered, shuttling him to the local gym for therapy, moving him into the director’s apartment along with a helper, and providing moral support.
Now, two years later, Dennis isn’t doing very well, in spite of all the help he received. In our newsletter we reported about his drinking and following friends who influence him in negative ways.
It would be easy to say Dennis is ungrateful, to speak badly about him, or to guilt-trip him.
But that would not acknowledge the reality that Dennis is an orphan.
In some ways, he isn’t an orphan anymore. He has family who consider him to be like a son. Andre and Oksana Pankyeyev have stood by his side and offered love and advice and helped him in every way they could. He stayed with former director Liz Millikan for many months while he recovered. So he’s not an orphan in the way we often use the word – that he is completely alone in the world and has no one to call “family.”
But he is still an orphan in that his background of orphanhood remains: the rejection and abandonment of his birth family, the years of institutionalization and neglect, and all the psychological and emotional repercussions of these traumas. You can read more about how neglect, abuse, abandonment, and institutionalization affect orphan children on our website in the Orphanage Graduates section.
Dennis only began to receive extensive help when he was a teenager, and it will take many more years for him to really trust that the Last Bell staff want to be his family and love him unconditionally – and to give up the many coping mechanisms that he developed to escape the pain of his childhood.
It’s a good thing, then, that when we talk about success in our ministry, we’re not talking about kids changing their lives 100% and becoming perfect Christians who only display positive character traits!
We define success as God defines it – as obedience to His commands, including “Look after orphans and widows in their distress.”
On our website we have described success as follows:
We see success…
…when Natasha, a single mom, receives help with the medical care for her young son – in a situation where she wouldn’t have known what to do.
…when Dennis, who is in prison, has someone to visit him; and knows that, though no one else remembers him, these Christians haven’t forgotten him.
…when Sveta, a teenage orphan, teaches the Bible to children at VBS camp and visits sick children in the hospital.
…when, through a houseparent’s hard work, a boy receives the disability status he needs so he will have a place to live and enough to eat.
…when Anya, a naturally hard-working, motivated young woman, does well in medical school – and has family to celebrate and encourage her along the way.
…when an orphan mom in an abusive relationship finds refuge for herself and her child in a crisis housing apartment.
…when a teenage boy, rejected by his parents a second time, has loving adults close by to walk with him through his grief.
…when any child, who might have been alone, is not alone.
We continue to pray that God will change Dennis’s heart and bring healing to his broken life. But changing hearts is God’s job; ours is to love and serve unconditionally, making sure that no orphan within our reach is alone.