DUSHANBE (UCAN) -- For the second week running, 50-year-old Sergei Khakimov hunted for an empty plastic bottle to take to the Missionaries of Charity sisters' soup kitchen.

It is the only way for the unemployed electrician to have a hot meal during this extremely cold winter, during which temperatures have gone as low as minus-25 degrees Celsius.

The nuns are still doing their best to provide the meals on Wednesdays and Sundays as usual, but the cold and lengthy power cuts have forced some changes.

"We don't have electricity most of the day, so it is very cold in the dining room for the people now," explained Sister Rosarius, who heads her community in Tajikistan. "Moreover, the water in our pipes has frozen, so we cannot wash the dishes left over by our visitors."

According to the Indian missioner, the nuns decided to keep cooking the meals but asked people to bring their own bowls, glass jars or plastic containers to eat out of.

Khakimov turned up with a plastic Coca-Cola bottle, its top cut off.

The nuns may not be able to wash dishes, but they can ladle out soup and hand out bread, Sister Rosarius said. "We just couldn't leave people without food during such a cold winter."

Tajikistan's State Hydrometeorology Agency has confirmed that the last time temperatures went so low was 25 years ago, in 1982. They have "warmed up" in February to between minus-17 and minus-10 degrees.

Meanwhile, an energy crisis the government blames on low reservoir levels has left many people with only a few rationed hours of electricity daily. People in the countryside have not had electricity since temperatures plummeted in January. Many businesses and primary schools are closed.

Khakimov relished the brief respite the nuns provided. "What a nice meal," he said, as he stood with others sipping the hot soup from his soda bottle and eating bread.

"This is the only place I can have a hot meal, unless I earn some money as a laborer," he continued. "But I hardly get a chance to do that as nobody wants to employ a homeless man."

He recounted how he went to Russia in search of work a year ago, taking half the money from the sale of his flat after his divorce. But after he spent all his money there and lost his documents, authorities deported him back to Tajikistan.

"Thanks to God there are sisters who feed us and support us in this crazy cold winter," he added, as two nuns and a volunteer dressed in heavy jackets and scarves stood on the packed snow in the sisters' yard and handed out the food.

The Catholic volunteer, Alena Babaeva, told UCA News, "We try to keep cooking hot meals because they are very useful for people during such incredibly cold weather." By her count, more than 120 people visit the soup kitchen in normal times, but the number has dropped to 80 because some elderly people will not venture out in the cold.

The youngest in the group that day was Maksim Chilin, 16, who said his alcoholic parents do not work and he seldom eats properly at home.

"I am so grateful to the sisters that they allow me to come here," said the thin boy, dressed in an oversized jacket.

One of the oldest to brave the severe weather was 63-year-old Nazira Ilinzeeva, a Muslim, who said she had been visiting the soup kitchen for two years. Her only son died in the army and her husband is paralyzed.

"I can't put into words my gratitude to the sisters. They always take care of us and don't stop even in such awful cold conditions," the former primary-school teacher said.

However, besides having to ask people to bring their own "dishes," the nuns have also had to stop offering homeless people free showers and laundry facilities after the frozen water pipes "exploded," as Sister Rosarius put it.

The nuns' mission is small -- two sisters from India, one from Pakistan and one from Kenya. Apart from the soup kitchen, they make home visits to elderly people and help poor and sick people with medicine.

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(Accompanying photos available at here)