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!