Bill is back in Norway after being in Kiev for one week for Easter services. Here is a a video that has pictures from our after church Easter fellowship and a few clips of some members wishing Helen to get better!

Doing better.

Helen is feeling better now, almost a week out of the hospital, but still some problems with breathing and being tired. She will continue on antibiotics for 3 more days, then take an xray after 2 more weeks of rest to see if her lungs are okay. If so, then she will return to Ukraine. Bill leaves for Ukraine in a few days.

Home from the Hospital

Helen came home from the hospital in Kragerø, Norway today and requested pizza. She enjoyed it and now has to take medicine for another week and rest for 2 weeks before she can return to Ukraine. Thanks for your prayers and concern.

Helen in Hospital.

While making a quick trip to Norway to get Russian visas and to speak to a Rotary Club in Oslo which is supporting the St. Luke's Family Center, Helen fell ill with pneumonia. She has been in the hospital for almost a week now in her home town of Kragerø. It was a very serious case, indicated by the bacteria count in her blood. Normal is 5 or less. When she entered the hospital, it was over 500. Over 100 is considered serious. The doctors immediately put her on intravenous antibiotics which she took until Saturday morning. She should be released from the hospital tomorrow, Monday, March 22. She will still take antibiotics in tablet form for 5- 10 days and then have rest at home for 2 weeks. After the rest period, they will check her lungs again to clear her for travel to Ukraine. The doctors said it could be 3-4 months before she feels 100%. Please keep her in your prayers and thoughts. Thanks for all the well-wishing on Facebook as well. Please click here for some pictures of her in the hospital, mostly after she was feeling better.

Winter creeping to a close.

Finally it looks as if winter may be starting to come to an end. Here are some pictures why we can hardly wait until Spring.

Blog Restart!

After a long break, this blog is being restarted!

First, a little update. The officially registered name of our ministry to homeless children and families at risk is known as “Dosvitok”. This is a Ukrainian word meaning Daybreak, but it is rarely used in modern speech and so is not widely recognized by the majority of the public. The church we started 2 years ago when we opened our new building is named St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, so we then informally called the ministry, the St. Luke’s Children’s Center.

The sign says St. Luke’s United Methodist Church and Family Center.

On the bottom is Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors, the official motto of the United Methodist Church.

In making our new sign, we decided to change the name to St. Luke’s Family Center because it reflects the shift of focus of our work. In large part due to the many active church groups and non-profit humanitarian organizations in Ukraine working with homeless children, orphans and other children at risk, the government in Ukraine in the past several years began to seriously look into the problem and start to work with these non-governmental agencies residing in Ukraine, including us. As stated earlier, the city’s Department of Juvenile Affairs gives us names of families whose children could be at risk of becoming homeless or semi-homeless.

Our daily schedule at the family center continues as before with two days a week devoted to our work project, where we simulate a small business of handicraft making. The project teaches such basic work skills such as being on time, not skipping work days, respect for others at the work place, working responsibly and doing quality work. The products made are now sold either in Norway or America in a restrictive market such as a missions festival, but in the future we hope we can compete in the Ukrainian market as a real business. The participants, our older homeless youth and mothers of the families we work with are becoming very creative in the products that are made, necklaces, bracelets and decorative candles, by looking at what people are wearing and what seems to sell in Ukraine and adjusting their designs accordingly. Some of the participants have never worked before and are now taking great pride in having a place to work.

Also the Mother and Child day has been expanded to 2 days a week, with Life Skill training for older youth, help with schoolwork for younger teens and elementary school age children, child care for preschoolers continuing on a daily basis.

The church is also doing well, with most of the members being participants in the family center. The church offers a midweek bible study now along with Sunday worship.

Bill now has more time to spend at the center and at St. Luke’s UMC as he is no longer District Superintendent of Ukraine. His term expired and at the 2009 Annual Conference a Ukrainian pastor, Sergei Bogomozyuk, is the new DS. He is pastor of one of our largest churches in Ukraine and is doing a great job in his new role as DS. Bill is now enjoying the extra time to concentrate on the St. Luke’s church.

Christmas was a special time this year as we had Christmas craft workshop on St. Nicholas’s day, Dec. 19 where we decorated candles, made Christmas ornaments, decorated gingerbread houses and indulged in a Norwegian Christmas tradition, having rice and cream porridge where 3 almonds has been placed in the big pot before all were served. Whoever found an almond got a special present! The adults enjoyed this as much as the children.

Christmas itself, celebrated on January 7, started with a worship service, continued with lunch and ended with a puppet theatre which was Leo Tolstoy’s story about the shoe maker who got a visit from Jesus. Changing the sanctuary into a dining room for 60 people proved to be a little challenge in our small room, but we managed to fit everyone in. Woody Wolfe, Beth Valentine and 4 others from Pennsylvania helped us celebrate and make this a day we would not soon forget. One of the mothers who goes to our Family Center said this was the best Christmas she had ever had.

It’s good to be back blogging and check back for future entries!

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!