JOHNSTON COUNTY — The Langdons can’t wait for Kristina, Anna and Dasha to return to the United States this summer. The three girls live most of each year in a former Soviet Republic in the radioactive shadow of Chernobyl.

And each summer, the girls and more than a dozen other Belarussian children come to Johnston County for a six-week respite from poverty and lingering nuclear fallout.

For many host families in the Pleasant Grove Belarussian Children’s Ministry, the children become their own. John Langdon, coordinator of the program, calls Kristina Danilchyk his daughter without skipping a beat. “There’s a lot of hugs and kisses and all from the kids when they get here,” he said. “It’s like a big family reunion.”

Since they first hosted then 8-year-old Kristina in 2005, the Langdons’ lives have become intertwined with Belarus. Kristina, now 12, came back each year after, and the Langdons also took in her sister, Dasha, a boy named Dennis and Anna Zemljanskay, a 14-year-old orphan.

“They are like our daughters that we don’t see but six weeks out of the year,” said Langdon, who also has two grown children and four grandchildren of his own, including one born last week. “There’s a lot of people that are separated but don’t get their kids but through the summer holidays; it’s almost like that.”

Over the summer, the Langdons take the kids on all-American trips to Dollywood and the beach, or let them spend lazy days in their backyard pool.

And during the winters, they visit Belarus to check on kids from the program. There, he said, he saw how much help the children needed.

“I was told about it, but it really didn’t hit home until I went over there, just how bad it was,” Langdon said, recalling skimpy potato meals and tiny homes insulated with rags. Besides thin diets, radiation from the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor weakens Belarussians’ immune systems, he said.

“When we got there, it was complete and utter shock,” said Joseph Buffkin, who has brought over Nastya Antonava for the past seven summers. “It’s like going back in time 60 years.”

A six-week stay in the States is often enough to lower radiation levels, revitalize the kids and keep them healthier through the rest of the year, Buffkin said. While in the States, the kids get dental, vision and general health care.

Antonava arrives each summer with black bags around her eyes, often proudly announcing that she has had just one cavity for the year. While Antonava and other Belarusians are in the States, a number of area doctors and dentists give them free health care through the Pleasant Grove group.

The Johnston County organization draws support and members from a number of area churches and is part of the American Belarussian Relief Organization, which has brought in more than 3,100 children since 1991. Many of the kids pick up English along the way too.

Buffkin said Antonava now speaks English with a Johnston County accent. Since she’ll be 18 this summer, she won’t be allowed to return next year, and she wouldn’t want to move away from her mother and grandmother.

Meanwhile, Nastya Lazovik hopes to move to the States when she turns 18, but the Belarussian government puts many more restrictions on orphans than most children. In fact, the country might not allow orphans to come this year.

After a Californian family with another program kept their Belarussian child in America, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said he would not allow orphans to take part in the program.

“We’re hoping and praying he’ll open the program back up,” Denise Buffkin, Joseph’s daughter-in-law, said, adding that ABRO had assured them that the orphans would be able to return.

The Johnston County group is still raising money for this summer. Donations will help provide for insurance deductibles and transportation and allow some fixed-income families to host a child.

Fundraising has been tougher in this economy, Denise Buffkin said, but the group will take donations at a concert scheduled for 7:30 p.m. March 21 at Friendship Baptist Church, near McGee’s Crossroads.

“It has been a little bit harder, but we find that people dig a little bit deeper,” she said.