Update from Helen

Greetings from Ukraine!

God is good and God loves Street Children are two phrases I believe in and have experienced especially the last ten years and I want to share with you all.

Two years ago we were so happy and blessed that we were able to buy a part of a building in Kiev for our street children ministry and in January 2008 we moved in to our new building. Since that, we have felt God’s presence in a special way.

Let me share for you some of our experiences:

Our main focus is on the street children, we have more and more children coming to us and we have seen the need of giving our older kids some work experience along with lot of other things.
In Fall 2008, we were asked by the local government in our area to also open our center to families at risk. We said yes to their request and we have now contact with about 10 new families in our area. The mothers are sending their children to after school activities and participating themselves in mother and children workshops we are providing.
During the Wednesday morning workshop, we have mothers and children coming to our center involved in doing activities together. We also provide a separate group for the mothers where we are discussing different topics to help them in their daily family life, talking about how to be a mother and what it means to more effectively raise their children.
The kids love to come to the center, they like to play with each other, listen to stories, do activities and have the possibility to play with all the toys we have at the center.

Afterwards, we eat lunch together, drink coffee and have time to fellowship with each other.

Our “After school group” starts when school is over. First, we eat dinner together before we help them with their homework or tutor them with subjects they find difficult. We have different activities such as a cooking class, model building and life skill groups. We also take trips to get to know our city play the card game UNO, table tennis and table football (foosball).

We have a lot of fun together.

We still continue working with street children and also homeless young adults. Now we have two main groups: those over 17 who have been in our program for several years and those 17 and younger. In the coming days we are going to start a work project for the young adults, teaching them to get and hold a job. We are going to introduce for them three possibilities of work options – creating and selling handicrafts, maintenance and babysitting. We will set up a “company”, and a part of the new project will be to help them to learn what it means to work responsibly. We will have contracts with each person, helping them to spend their money and how to save money. We are excited about this new opportunity for ministry.
For the street children, we continue to be a bridge between life on the street and a healthy home environment. We have Life Skill programs, cooking classes and individual counseling sessions. We help them to gather essential documents, provide a place where they can wash their clothes, buy new clothes for them when the seasons change, take them to hospitals when necessary, among a lot of other things. And always we are attempting to locate a stable family environment for them, whether back at home, with relatives or a good institution.
Every Sunday we invite all of our kids and families to our worship service and today we have 40 people coming to church.
We want to be an oasis for the people coming to our center and a place where we challenge each other to grow as people. 

Thank you for your support and you are always welcome to come see us in Kiev!

Happy Old New Year

In Ukraine, you celebrate all the holidays you can get, especially in the middle of not just the Worldwide Financial Crisis, but a Gas Crisis!

The Old New Year is celebrated in Ukraine as the Orthodox churches follow the Julian Calendar, which has New Year's Day on Jan 14 and Christmas Day on Jan 7.    The Protestant, Catholic and Greek Catholic churches, however, celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25.  Since New Year's and Old New Year's Days are celebrated by everyone, in essence Ukraine has 2 Christmas's and 2 New Year's.  Very nice arrangement, actually.

Today, Helen was attending the Mother and Child group we have for famil at risk, a new program at our center.   Since it was the Old New Year, she asked the mother's how they celebrated New Year's Day.  The mothers were enthusiastic about replying, hoping to help educate the foreigner and explained how a Ukrainian New Year should be celebrated with a big New Year's day tree, lots of presents under the tree, relatives in attendance, plenty of good food and then at midnight, opening the presents.  (Ukrainians celebrate New Year's similarly to the way Christmas is celebrated in many western countries).   The mothers agreed, yes, that was the way to celebrate New Years.

But then Helen asked, how did you celebrate New Years this year at your house?  The mothers fell silent and then one offered,

 "Well, we really didn't have much money for food and presents.  Plus, my brother who lives with us in the two room apartment along with my mother and 4 children, uses New Years as an excuse to get drunk.  Actually, he uses any holiday as an excuse to get drunk.  As usual, he gets angry, hits me, tries to hit the children. I try to stand in the door to prevent him from coming into our room.   This year, he also threw up on the floor and the two youngest slipped and fell in his vomit."

Another mother then said, "yes, my husband does the same thing.  Uses the holidays as an excuse to get drunk.  But I told him he better not hit me again or I would leave.   That scared him a bit.   Usually, we just leave the house when he gets this way.  He ruins every holiday."

It's families-at-risk like these that have a likelihood of the children running to the streets to escape the chaos at home.  Please pray for this new ministry in order to give families the spiritual support and coping skills to so that the families can remain intact.