Friends, thank you so much for your support of our ministry. God has been so gracious in answering your prayers for us! I remember the last group of people I spoke to before I went back to Ukraine this December was the ladies missionary support group at Harbour Shores (my home church). I shared that our two biggest prayer requests were that we would find good staff, and that God would give us a plan for ministry (November was when we had those awful problems with the government and some other believers and our kids were taken out of the home). Right after I got back to Ukraine we lost the temporary house-parents we had, and so our three big requests were that we needed staff, the main staff we needed was house-parents, and we needed direction for the ministry to take now that we couldn’t have kids live with us.
Between my trip home last year and my trip home this summer God answered all those prayers!
As for staff, Ira Mikityook has continued working with us and is continually growing more dedicated and passionate about the orphans coming to Christ. For three months, Andre Krevoruchko volunteered with us, and then we added him to the staff May1. He is an incredibly hard worker, a team player, and also feels a clear calling from God to work with orphans through Last Bell. The three of us were praying all spring, with you, that God would give us house-parents.
Then one day I was out to eat with a special friend of mine who works at a Mission in Zhitomir, and I was talking to her about our need for house-parents for our ministry. Her face lit up and she started telling me about these wonderful people she had worked with at her mission. They had taught abstinence education (topics were the dangers of “free sex”, pregnancy, STDs and AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse etc.) to youth in public schools all around the city. Now the husband was in a different mission and the wife was at home with a baby and a 5 year old. I still remember everything she told me about them, because I couldn’t have even thought to pray for such wonderful characteristics in house-parents. She said they were honest, full of integrity, sincere, full of energy and enthusiasm, gifted at working with youth, compassionate, very strong spiritually, funny, and talented. It didn’t work out for me to meet with this couple until a month after I heard about them. Even this had divine reasons. For two weeks before I talked to them they had been fasting and praying about where the Lord wanted Oksana to pour out her life in ministry to the Lord. They had also been praying about a way they could live separate from Oksana’s mother (they’d lived with her since they were married). So when I invited them to the ministry they immediately assumed it was from the Lord because it came as an answer to prayer. Andre had always had a desire to work with youth full time. Also, someone had prophesied over Oksana a few years back that she would be a mother to very many young women. She was so confused by that and wondered why she wouldn’t be a good counselor or teacher for young women, why a mother? Now she knows!
The Lord also answered our prayer for direction for the ministry. Our plans are in place to use the house this fall as a daily family center for graduates. We’ll have the house open Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday every week and we’ll have activities planned every day. We hope to be able to reach many more youth this way, because instead of having a select few kids that are “ours”, all kids will feel welcome at the house, and we’ll be able to influence many times more kids than we would have with a residential program. Also, we now are responsible for the whole team of volunteers that will work in the orphanage this fall, and this is a wonderful opportunity and blessing from the Lord, but it will be a huge undertaking. Like Andre Krevoruchko told me this summer, we haven’t even seen the beginning of the work God has for us to do. He said we’ve not even reached the starting blocks of this race!
We are sure that a lot of our ideas will fail and we’ll have to do a lot of rearranging once we begin ministry in the fall, but we are confident the Lord will guide us. We know he loves the kids more than we ever could and this is His ministry that he is guiding and protecting. The smartest thing we can do with this ministry is take all our problems and questions to Him in prayer! He has been so faithful.
Please continue to pray this August for the staff in Ukraine as they do some remodeling on the home and please pray for Ira especially as she takes care of the girls. Also, pray for the opening of the house in September. Our biggest concern right now is finances. Our operating budget will double September 1st, and we have less than 20% of that coming in monthly! Please pray the Lord would bring us sponsors.
