The words of this orphanage director were candid, “We are now raising the children of the children we raised not too many years ago….it is a cycle that must be broken, but right now, it is not….”

We had just finished the tour of her orphanage, Jonkoi (a new orphanage for us, home to 200 orphans ages 7-18 years old).

Statistics undergird this sad, tragic truth:

“The Russian government reports that, every year, some 15,000 orphans age out of state-run orphanages.    Within three years, 10% have committed suicide, 5,000 will be unemployed, 6,000 will be homeless, and 3,000 will be in prison.”

“When orphans finally leave state-run institutions, they suffer the damaging effects of institutionalization, and the second class status with which society labels them and which follows them the rest of their lives.”

Human Rights Watch, “Abandoned to the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages,” November, 1998

At the second of the five orphanages we would visit, Nozovoyeh, the director said the same thing. This is a facility (really a campus of buildings) built in 1951, but two of the buildings date back to before the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). Originally it was a farmstead owned by a German family named Kessler.

Incredibly, there are 334 orphans living there, the director (who has been there 33 years) tells us. Actually, 163 of those are real orphans. They range in age from 6 to 17 years old, and most of them are there because they have speech problems. Our Ukrainian orphanage team has been there twice now, splitting our original Gvardyehskoyeh orphanage team of 15 members, into two teams, and on the one weekend per month trips to the Crimea, five of the team, led by Marina Osaulenko, have begun to visit Nozovoyeh.

It was obvious that all the buildings were in great disrepeair as the director toured the facility with us. As we make a commitment to work with a certain orphanage, we do so hoping to bring a comprehensive approach that includes not only the spiritual ministry of the team coming one weekend a month and conducting meetings, activities, crafts and the like, but also being sensitive to help with physical needs like winter coats, winter boots, other clothes, and the renovation of facilities.

What are the histories of these kids? The director shared with me three stories as examples:

Andrei Ivanov, who is 9 years old , was abanonded by his parents. He actually was found begging on the streets when he was sent to the orphanage. The director tells us that his parents simply abandoned him on the streets, and disappeared, and haven’t been heard from since. How sad and tragic.

Many of the parents of the Nozovoyeh kids are alcoholics in large measure, and some have died from alcoholism, and some have even died from AIDS.

Zinora is 12 and lives at the orphanage because her parents rights were revoked. They are alcohgolics, unemployed, and would spend all of the family’s money on alcohol, and deprive the children of even the basics of food and living. They actually lived in a temporary shed, their alcohol problem was so consuming, and the government took the children away to live in the orphanage.

Angela is 17 years old today, but when she was born, she had a hair lip, and her mother seeing the child’s handicap, simply abandoned her as a baby at the hospital. The director has since asked Angela if she ever wanted to see her mother again who has remarirred and lives in Sevastopol (the director, after much investigation --- two years worth --- managed to track the mother down), and Angela said she wasn’t ready, but someday would like to.

The stories are echoed again and again, no matter if we were standing at Joinkoi, Gvardyehskoyeh, Nozovoyeh, or two days later in the Kharkov region and Novo Vodolaga or Bogodova orphanages.

This trip was sobering yet exciting, as we visited these five orphanages, three of which we had begun work with in the past three years, and the other two where we would soon be launching work.

Parallel is the growth of the Ukrainian orphanage ministry team, now fifteen volunteers strong, who dedicate one weekend per month to travel (sometimes long distances) to spend time with the orphans at these facilities, ministering to them, building relationships, seeking in the long haul to break the vicious, tragic cycle the director and the statistics document.

The end of the trip was highlighted by a first of the year ‘Summit’ meeting --- a planning, prayer, strategy session dedicated to gathering our staff and several representatives of our leadership team in Kiev to focus on plans and preparations for 2007 and beyond.

We sought to become more effective, discussing ideas to improve what we do and how we do it.

Meeting three blocks from Independence Square in downtown Kiev were Galia Kustova, Khakrov, Ukraine; Alousha Krashevski, Latvia; Katya Bezdetko, Minsk, Belarus; Vanya Pkhlopkov, Kiev, Ukraine; Lena Evdoshenko, Kiev, Ukraine; Ruslan Karabadchak, Izmael, Ukraine; Mariana Galaka, Kharkov, Ukraine; Marina Osaulenko, Chernigov, Ukraine; and Lyuba Navrotskaya, Kharkov, Ukraine.

It was dynamic, the results of which will impact every area of work we are engaged in --- leadership training, new believers’ discipleship camps, Russian evangelism team ministry, and the orphanage work and its expansion.

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