Pray without ceasing ... for our community clinics for Africans!

Weekly Prayer Needs:

• For LABORERS, especially Russians, to come alongside Agape as volunteers at this community clinic.
• That medical staff have protection and wisdom in working with this population.
• That those women caught in prostitution find a safe way out.
• For the opportunity to address the spiritual needs of the people who come to this clinic.

Other Prayer Concerns:

• That people who believe God has called them to serve with Agape's ministry will have the courage to take a next step. Faith works "if" you act on it.
• The Agape Farm: for reliable workers and for equipment to stay in good working-order during the harvest season; for bountiful hay and fresh produce harvests this summer and fall.
• For good weather during our Family Day - Hallelulia Festival and other outdoor events.

​Challenges:
African migrants are another vulnerable population brought to Russia or they come as students hoping for a less expensive education. They also suffer perse­cution, beatings, deplorable living conditions, and have no access to the Russian health care system or social services. Single women get caught in prostitution or end up on the streets pregnant. Our Agape staff serve at a "free" clinic for Africans and address their medical needs and help them find needed resources such as safe housing. 

​Moscow’s indefinite coronavirus lockdown has left the city’s vulnerable homeless population with an impossible choice — find shelter or risk paying steep fines, while facing the danger of becoming infected with a potentially deadly disease.  

In many European countries, where the coronavirus has hit hard, spaces including hotels, office buildings and gymnasiums have been converted into isolation shelters for the homeless. No such measures have been taken in Russia, where anti-homeless stigma is strong — and with parks, shopping centers and train stations closed and volunteers staying home, Moscow’s homeless have few options for finding shelter and basic necessities.

“The homeless have no way to self-isolate,” Daria Baybakova, the head of the Moscow branch of the Nochlezhka NGO, which operates a network of shelters in St. Petersburg and the capital, told The Moscow Times. 

Official statistics for Russia’s homeless population are patchy, with data from the most recent census in 2010 placing the number of people living on the streets nationwide at 65,000. Nochlezhka — or “Overnight Stay” — says the number is closer to 1 million, with the number of homeless in Moscow alone at about 80,000.

That number has only increased since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, Baybakova said, and there are far too few places in shelters to accommodate them all.