Ukraine orphan

The Gift of Tomorrow Ukrainian-American partnerships work toward a Ukraine without orphans.

by Deborah Amend

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“Da, zaftra?” Tomorrow, yes? A chorus of little voices are each asking the same thing: “Will you come back and visit tomorrow?”

Visiting the Tsurupinsk Home for Disabled Children in Ukraine might have been somewhat cathartic for me, as it was where my youngest daughter would be living today had adoption not brought her into our family, but it was bittersweet because of the children I was leaving behind.

All I had done was bring some cookies and talk briefly with a group of elementary-age boys, showing them pictures of my daughter and her dazzling purple wheelchair.

I didn’t dare show them the handicap accessible bus that picks her up daily for school, the breakfasts she turns her nose up at, the pictures of her weekly swim lessons, the bunk bed she shares with her sister, or any of the other blessings that fill her daily life. I did tell them about our dogs, which sparked a light in their eyes as those in wheelchairs rolled about, popping wheelies in the same way my daughter does.

Anna has a future. Despite her disability, she’ll likely go to college, get married, have children. All because she found the golden ticket. She was adopted. These sweet boys, who live in the nearly futile hope that they will ever have a family, face life in an institution or begging on the street.

We left the boys and headed to the art studio at the orphanage. There I found Vitaly, a polite young man who was abandoned at birth due to his dwarfism. Sixteen years old, a gifted artist and singer, Vitaly was preparing for an art show in Kyiv. A committed Christian, Vitaly has only a couple more years at the home before he will be moved on to what will likely be a very lonely life elsewhere. His constant prayer is for an American family to adopt him.

in the United States via Master Provision’s project Master Care, My Home began to change the lives of many orphans in southern Ukraine.

The men began by visiting the orphanages, building relationships with the children and staff and giving much needed resources. Before long, the Ponomarevas adopted two young boys, and the Gordenkos adopted two girls.

The children flourished, and My Home’s vision expanded beyond orphanage relief to encompass the goal of finding Ukrainian Christian families for other children.

Outside of the cultural ideology that rejects orphans, the main obstacle most Christian families face regarding adoption is financial. The Ukrainian government requires an adoptive family to have a home that provides 9 to 13 square meters per family member, excluding the kitchen and bath. Most citizens live in much smaller dwellings and are thus unable to adopt. My Home has served over 60 families by building additions to homes and contributing to over 100 adoptions. Each addition costs an average of $10,000 to complete.

Ongoing financial support for orphanages and adoptive families is another area of focus. Limited government funds directed toward orphanages often do not reach their destination, leaving children undereducated and malnourished. At the same time, daily life for most Ukrainians is difficult. More than 35 percent of the population lives beneath the poverty level, and the annual inflation rate often exceeds 10 percent. Unemployment hovers around 8 percent, and underemployment is estimated at over 20 percent. The black market, some estimates say, accounts for over 40 percent of the economy. Small homes or apartments often house multiple generations under one roof.

A remnant

In the 10 years since the birth of My Home, financial support has proven to be only the start. Over 100 children in southern Ukraine have now found families, and as they grow up they begin to process the implications of having been abandoned by their biological family. As one adoptive parent asked, “What do you tell your child when no one knows who his birth mother was? She entered the hospital under an assumed name and climbed out the window after the child’s birth.”

Birth stories like this are not uncommon, and frequent, too, are stories of horrific abuse and neglect that result from alcoholic homes or inconsistent care within the state-run orphanage system. The children’s journey to wholeness is hindered by the lack of educational and therapeutic resources for dealing with the mental trauma as well as disabilities. The healing hand of God is poised and ready, but many parents find these wounds heal very slowly. In response to this, My Home has partnered with the Canada-based LAMb International, a ministry that works in the Ukraine.

LAMb International was founded by two couples: Lynn and Ruby Johnston and Donald and Johanna Buchman.

Ruby Johnston, a career social worker, with her husband, Lynn, a retired high school educator, saw the need within their local churches for a standardized and proven method of training for leadership. She customized her leadership workshops for a Christian audience and began delivering them to churches. When she and Lynn were invited to present a workshop at a church in Ukraine, their backgrounds in education and social work led them to request a visit to the local orphanage. While the children were compelling, something else caught Ruby Johnston’s attention.

Da, zaftra? No, I wasn’t able to come back the next day, but because the Lord is at work in Ukraine there are others who will. My involvement in Ukraine began nearly a decade ago when my husband and I completed our first adoption. Anna was only 3 at the time, but we were told repeatedly by the governing authorities in her region that no one in Ukraine would ever adopt “such a child as this,” referring to her missing arm and severely deformed legs and hips. My prayer became that God would raise up a remnant of faithful Ukrainians who would embrace not only the orphan, but the disabled orphan as well.

Ten years later, Anna is a 13-year-old honor student who inspires not only those around her but also—through my memoir about her adoption and multiple national and international television features—people around the world.

Anna is a shining example of where these children could be. This past autumn, when I returned to Ukraine to teach at a family camp for adoptive families, I saw that God, indeed, had begun to answer my prayer.

Anatoly Ponomareva is the pastor of a Christian church in a village outside the city of Kherson. He and his wife, Galina, were devastated when their fifth child, a son, died at the age of 3 after eating poisonous mushrooms. In the midst of their grief, Anatoly’s friend, Ukrainian businessman Alexander Gordenko, and Gordenko’s American business partner, Joe Parker, invited him to visit orphanages with them. Parker had come to Ukraine with the US-based ministry Master Provision. As these men saw the suffering of the orphans, they were moved to do more. Along with two Ukrainian churches and Master Provision, they launched My Home. Funded in part through Parker and Gordenko’s business and donations gathered

Support beyond financial

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“It was apparent to me, from my A group of preschool children years of work in child welfare, that the in a Ukrainian orphanage prestaff at the orphanage had little knowlpare for their afternoon nap. edge in the way of outcome-based practices and that the children would benefit greatly if the staff were trained.

We started doing training on our second trip, training caregivers from nine different orphanages and shelters.”

The Johnstons trained the workers and also visited the orphanages to help them implement the practices. On return trips, the couple brought teams of people from home and worked on relationship-building with the orphanages. They emphasized one-on-one time with the children; leading games, stories, and crafts; and providing much-needed resources.

“The quality of care in orphanages varies greatly,” explains Ruby. Orphanages are severely underfunded and overpopulated. Estimates put the number of orphans and street children at over 100,000. Ukrainians are thoughtful, peaceful, and hospitable people. Their country older orphans, to create a life-skills curriculum to use with is still recovering from 60 years under Soviet rule and the tweens and teens. current oppression of a mafia-controlled culture. Little has The curriculum covers various topics, from identity been offered to those who work in orphanages as they in Christ to sexuality, marriage, and childrearing. It also care for the thousands of children that have fallen victim teaches job skills, including identifying job scams that to enormous social problems. might lead to human trafficking. The Johnstons have perPreviously, Ruby had written a standardized compesonally trained over 600 volunteers in Ukraine, including tency training program for the province of Manitoba. LAMb master trainers who go on to train new volunteers. had the entire manual translated into Russian and gifted ILDC is translating training materials for parents it to orphanage staff and advisors. Word of their work as well. Recently released was Step-by-Step to Effecspread throughout the country, which gave rise to more tive Parenting, a series of 80 small booklets, each one requests for child-welfare training. They moved beyond covering a specific parenting topic, such as bedwetting or staff training and began training high-level government oftemper tantrums. For adoptive parents, Jayne Schooler’s ficials. They went on to establish the International Leaderacclaimed books Telling the Truth to Your Adoptive or ship Development Center (ILDC) in Ukraine, which, while Foster Child and Wounded Children, Healing Homes, have partnered with LAMb in Canada, is run by a Ukrainian been translated and given to parents at conferences and staff. The ILDC then partnered with the ministry Orphan’s through ministries.

Promise, the Christian Broadcast Network’s ministry to Adoption conferences have also sprung up, and this past September LAMb partnered with My Home to host a conference at which Thanks to the extension being built by the My Home fund, the I was privileged to be a trainer. Two Beckhtold family (pictured here with the author, on far left) will hundred people, made up of 40 adoptive soon be bringing Kiril (second from the left), as well as another families plus volunteers and staff, met at child, home with them. a family resort on the Black Sea for five days of training and recreational activities.

During the final evening worship, participants listened to a sermon on Matthew 5: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” All participated in a “covenant of salt,” committing to continue to labor on behalf of the orphan.

The partnership between these ministries has also been instrumental in producing an organization called the Alliance for Ukraine without Orphans. Governed by a board that is almost entirely Ukrainian, the alliance organized its first “Orphan Sunday” last November, with over 170 churches from denominations as diverse as orthodox, charismatic, Baptist, and

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Seventh Day Adventist praying for, preaching on, and participating in orphan ministry. Documentaries produced with the cooperation of agencies in the alliance, The Gift of Adoption and Extraordinary Kids (profiling disabled orphans) were screened in churches around the nation.

With over 31,000 registered churches in Ukraine, those involved believe it is well within the scope of the church to find homes for all 28,625 orphans legally available for adoption.

The disabled

Even as the spirit of adoption has begun to flourish in Ukraine, there is a still a demographic that is excluded— the disabled. Most often abandoned at birth, an estimated 6,000 severely disabled orphans live in Ukraine, with the vast majority tucked away in institutions, a completely forgotten people.

Gordenko notes, “Initially we were just working with children in the orphanages; however, when American Christian families came to adopt special needs children and we were able to fellowship with them, our eyes were opened to the need these children have for a family.”

Gordenko and My Home director Andrey Beglenko began to visit Tsurupinsk Home for Disabled Children several years ago. At first the director was leery of their intent, but over time a relationship was built and My Home began to offer their services to the orphanage. Several families opened their homes for visits, and some of the teens began to attend church.

Around the same time, a local believer, Allah Beckhtold, began to visit the orphanage. Beckhtold and her husband had moved to southern Ukraine from Kazakstan several years before and felt their nest was empty with only their youngest child still at home. Beckhtold regularly visited Tsurupinsk Home, where she taught the children an ancient form of wax painting called encaustic art. One young man showed a talent for encaustic art, and Beckhtold enjoyed working with him. With the permission of the orphanage, she invited him to their home for dinner. Soon he was spending weekends and holidays there.

“We felt that Kiril belonged in our home, but our house was so small that the state welfare service would not give us permission to adopt or even foster him. But the Lord is good and merciful. He sent us the ministers of the My Home Fund. They offered their help, and now there is remodeling going on in our yard. Soon our house will have three new rooms: one for Kiril, one for our other son, and a third for another child for us to adopt.”

Kiril will not be the only youth finally finding a

Make a difference

For more information about the ministries in this article, including ways you can get involved in orphan ministry in Ukraine, log onto these websites: My Home for Orphans (MyHomeforOrphans.com.ua) Master Care, a division of MasterProvisions (MasterProvisions.org) LAMb International (LAMbInternational.org) International Leadership Development Center (ILDCua.org) Orphan’s Promise (CBN.com/OrphansPromise/profileUkraine.asp) The Alliance for Ukraine without Orphans (UkraineWithoutOrphans.org)

family. Several other families, including the Ponomarevas, are in the process of adopting or taking legal guardianship of disabled teens. My Home has begun advocating for the higher education of disabled children, helping three of them obtain entrance to post-secondary vocational schools.

Partnering with A gifted artist, Vitaly, 16, still holds out the churches hope of adoption by a Ukrainian or a in Tsurupinsk, US family.

My Home has begun the construction of a center that will house three families adopting children with special needs. The center will also contain a training center for Christians from all over Ukraine who are willing to take disabled children into their families Compared to the estimate of 100,000 orphans nationwide, the hundreds that have found homes can seem insignificant. However, believers there are working diligently to serve those still lost. They have undertaken a daunting task, one that they cannot do on their own. “Support from the US makes a huge difference,” notes Gordenko.

“First of all there is prayer support. Then there is financial support, which is so helpful to our families. And, there is still a need for US partners to find homes for specialneeds orphans.

While the tide is changing, it is not changing quickly enough for children like Vitaly, who daily moves closer to the age where he can no longer be adopted, to find a home in his own country. “There are practically no families willing to take disabled children in Ukraine,” laments Beckhtold, who longs for more Christians to take up this particular cross.

My 10-year-old prayer has been answered hundreds of times over now, and to see so many children sealed by love into a forever family is a blessing to witness. Yet, as the director of my youngest daughter’s former orphanage, the Kherson Regional Babyhouse, pointed out, “In 2004, there were 135 babies living here. Now there are 70. Things are definitely getting better… but there are still 70 children here…”

Deborah Amend is the author of A Dress for Anna, which chronicles her and her husband’s first international adoption. The mother of five children now, including another daughter from Kazakhstan, she lives in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area, where she focuses on raising her family and, through writing and speaking, advocating for adoption, Christian service to the poor, and a healthy biblical respect for people with disabilities.

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