An interview with Sister Anna, the head sister of the home-care service of St. Elisabeth Convent.
- Sister Anna, how was the home-care service organized?
The spiritual
father of the convent, archpriest Andrew, had been considering organizing a
rest home at the Convent for quite a long time.
Two years ago
he blessed the sisterhood to learn about home-care services.What we learned was that
there were several commercial organizations providing such service, but their
staff was not always qualified enough. At the same time, at the churches there
are groups of people, who voluntarily help people in need, the weak and the
lonely.
- What the home-care service did start with?
Together with
the former head sister we were blessed to deal with this obedience. We took out
advertisements about our service, and as soon as we got first requests for
help, we started our work.
- Who are your patients? Who do you visit and help?
They are
absolutely different people: the ill, the elderly, the lonely, the disabled –
all who need help and support. But most often these people need communication.
- How many sisters are currently engaged in your home-care
service?
Different
people come to us and we give employment to them. But I always draw their
attention to the fact that this is not just a job, but our ministry. Sometimes
the volunteers, who can help 2-3 times a week, come and stay with the patients
for several hours. The amount of the sisters began to increase quite rapidly.
In 6 months 15 new sisters came, and today there are 25 of them.
- Have you gone through a special nursing course? Do
you have any specific education?
I read in a
church newspaper that in the Church of the icon of the Mother of God “The Joy
of All who Sorrow” there was Sister Galina, who was also dealing with home-care
service. With the blessing of our spiritual father I called Sister Galina and
asked her to teach me, how to take care of disabled people. Together we visited
the home of an ill old lady. That was my training and obedience at the same time.
- What were the difficulties you faced when you began
your social work?
At the very
beginning we faced serious problems because we lacked financial support and because
there were only a few of us. Once we were invited to help a woman, who was
released from the hospital after she had had a stroke. Her relatives
could not look after her, while the sister from our service could help her only for two hours a day. We did everything we could to help, however, the woman died from blood poisoning.
After we finished the
private course with Sister Galina, we decided to go through the course
organized by the House of Mercy. Last year 14 of our sisters have finished this
course, and today 16 of them have certificates which allow them to look after severely ill people.
What is more,
we went through the course in psychology. Today we also visit special lectures which are held for us. We always try to improve ourselves and develope new skills, because the level of
living of our patients depends on how good a sister can care for a person, on
the level of our education as the sisters from the home-care service. You can
either turn a person into a vegetable, or help him recover by using all his
corporal and spiritual resources.
The sisters
should understand, what the illness a person suffers from, and how they can cope with this illness. We learn how to transport severely ill people, how to
wash them and feed them. The sisters who work in the home-care service
are the sisters of charity. They come to different families, where people are different as well. Some of them are unfaithful, while some of them were
baptized but did not attend a church since childhood, let alone that in some
families there are internal conflicts between the family members. You see, a
person was living quietly, but when he suddenly got sick, and faced a completely different
way of life. Obviously, in such cases his attitude and character changes, and his
soul hurts. The relatives are often on the verge of stress, as they do not know
how to behave with an ill person. This is why a sister should know how to help them both physically and spiritually.
- Why do people refer to you for help?
It seems to me
they think that if the home-care service is organized by the Convent, then the
sisters working there are kind, merciful and responsible. People feel they can
trust our sisters. They start to search for a service on the internet and find
information about us. They just call us, while we conceive each call as a signal
from God. If a family asks us for help, then we should go and do our best to
help these people. People may think they get to us by chance, but we have a
different view.
- Have you ever had the cases, when people turned to
God due to the help they got from the sisters?
Once we were
invited to an old man, his name was Valeriy. He was a very angry man, who cursed
all the time. He suffered from bed sored, had a fractured femoral neck,
epilepsy and a blood-stroke. When he saw our sister he was scared and asked for
their ID cards, because there was a conflict in the family: his relatives were
sharing an inherited house. His niece could not look after him, while his wife
was about to have a nervous breakdown. We took a decision to send our brother
Igor to help the man.
First of all,
he did his best to provide the patient with good care: a comfortable bed, a
clean room... He also cured his bed sores and other wound. At the same time brother
Igor began to pray for his patient when he would visit him, and a bit later Valeriy learned the Lord’s
prayer with his help. Finally, in seven months time, the man agreed to partake of the Holy Communion.
There has been
another case recently. A woman asked for help. Her Mother, Helen, had a stroke. After that she was lying on her bed and did not say a word. I
came to her, cared for her, but as soon as we started to talk about God, she
turned aside. Sometime afterwards her condition began to get worse and she was near death. We all tried to assure her to partake of The Holy Communion and invited a priest, but the old lady refused. Then one of the
sisters kneeled near her bed and asked her, whether she wanted her own mother
to partake of the Holy Sacraments before her death or not. Helen said yes and began
to recall certain moments from her past. Finally, she agreed to partake of the Holy Communion. In a couple of days she died.
Later we
learned from her relatives, that her mother was a faithful woman and worked as
a warden in the church. Helen attended the church in her childhood, but later
she became an atheist and the leader of an atheist movement. In the end of
her life, God showed His mercy and allowed her to pass away after she had partaken of the Holy Communion.
One more story.
We came to another old lady, Rimma. She had multiple fractures and suferred from memory loss. She was very weak
and did not realize what happened, that is why her relatives had to tie her to
the bed. Her husband who loved her very much nursed her. However, everything he
was able to do was to cook for her, while she needed constant skilled care. Neither the old
lady nor the old man visited the church and partook of the Communion.
Our
sisters sat by her bedside day and night. Little by little, old Rimma began to
recognize the nurses by their kerchiefs, started to respond and partake of the Holy Communion. The sisters looked after the old lady untill her death. When her coffin
stood in our church and the old man sat by it, I came closer to console him. He
was crying his eyes out, but he was very grateful for the help as well. He said:
“As my Rimma died I do not want anything, but to visit the church”. Such moments
remind me that we do not come to people in vain.
By
the way, when our patients die, sisters do not leave the post. They stay nearby
until a person is buried and constantly read the Psalter. There are moments
when a daughter calls in the morning and says that her mother died and a sister
does not need to come to them. However, a sister visits them anyways and stays untill the very end. She helps to wash the body and calls a priest.
- Is there anything we can do to support your social
ministry?
We are especially
interested in products for care and medical equipment. Together with patients
whose relatives support our ministry, there are also patients with extremely low
income. This is why we need financial support to provide them with necessary care, as
well as for further development of our service and education, and finally for special
uniforms for our sisters.
You can support the ministry of the home-care service of St.
Elisabeth Convent any time by ordering from the Catalogue of Good Deeds or Donating below.
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