Background
The ministry of You Will Be Found in Slavyansk, Ukraine is a multifaceted ministry to orphans and children at risk.
Our Vision:
It is our dream that within the next five years, Ukraine becomes a country without orphans. It is our dream that every orphan can hear the phrase “You have been found.” In Ukraine, there are over 100,000 orphans. However, only 32,000 of those are legally adoptable (many of the others still have living parents but are in the orphanage due to poverty, alcoholism, etc). Today in Ukraine, there are 28,000 churches. That means that if every pastor and priest received the truth of God’s heart for orphans as well as how Christians are supposed to participate in providing the solution for the orphan problem and began speaking this truth in their churches, then it is truly possible that the orphanages in Ukraine would be emptied. If every church just took one orphan, almost all the adoptable orphans in Ukraine would have families. We believe that Christians are truly able to change the fate of the orphan in our country.
Projects:
- We support 160 foster families in Ukraine, both through financial support and also emotional and spiritual support by having our staff travel across Ukraine and Russia to do training seminars and conduct support groups for foster and adoptive families.
- Media ministry called TV-together—we have a heart to empty the orphanages by encouraging and challenging Ukrainians to adopt and foster orphans. We have a talk show (Time of Good Changes) that reaches 2 millions viewers and we are traveling to Russia in September to do a talk show there as well. We have also made a number of short film clips about adoption/fostercare and are in the process of trying to film a TV series on the subject
- We support a Christian orphanage with 16-18 children
- We work daily with over 60 foster families in our church and immediate area. We expect to see this number grow. One of the most unique things about our ministry is that we have a partnership with the local hospital that receives all abandoned babies. The hospital places the babies directly in the care of our ministry and we find families immediately for them. In Ukraine this is highly unusual, as typically babies go straight from the hospitals where they are abandoned into the orphanage system. The ability to take them straight from the hospital into families saves children an incredible amount of trauma and is an aspect of our program that we envision replicating across Ukraine.
