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Saturday morning update

Hello all,

Our students have all taken at least one child out to lunch and out on the town today. The purpose of this time is to continue to build the relationship and clarify the Gospel, encourage, comfort, or build up the child they are with today. Its a great opportunity for one-on-one evangelism/discipleship. I’m sitting in McDonald’s enjoying free Wi-fi. Wow! Ukraine has sure changed since that first trip in 2001. Yet, as the city continues to grow and “Westernize,” so much stays the same.

On our trip into Vinnitsa we stopped at a home where three of the children from the orphanage live with their parents. You see, in Ukraine, just because you’re in an orphanage, doesn’t necessarily mean that your parents have abandoned you or are dead. In many cases, they are “social” orphans where the parents or close relative cannot take care of them or has decided not to. You can imagine how difficult this must be to have your mother or father simply not want you. In this particular case, the government saw that the parents couldn’t adequately care for the children. The father is a drug addict and alcoholic while the mother is an alcoholic. The three were put in the orphanage but the parents got them back. When we went into the home, there were seven children in there! SEVEN! These weren’t older kids but seven kids ranging in age from a little baby up to about 10 years old. I have seven children and to see the conditions they were living in, made me want to vomit.

As soon as we walked into the home, there was a stench in there that I cannot adequately explain other than to say it smelled like death. I looked down as Vince asked the dad (Slavik) how his leg was doing. His lower leg was terribly infected as the bandage was saturated with infectious pus. Apparently, the years of drugs and alcohol has rendered his body incapable of fighting infection. Gangrene is setting in and it needs to be amputated. You cannot imagine the smell.

The home was a little bigger than a couple of large janitor’s closets. No inside bathroom, and no running water. One of the children was tied by his ankle to the bed. Alex said this was to ensure that he didn’t leave. I guess he’s the rambunctious one. He tried to make it to Vince but the string prevented him from getting to him, so we went to him.

“Are these all their kids?” I asked. Alex said, “Having children is their job.” They get money for the amount of children they have. The more children they have, the more they get. Ukraine has an initiative right now to boost their population. If the children are in the orphanage, they don’t get paid money for them. That makes sense…in a morbid sort of way. I’m hoping to go back to this home to get video and pictures. I think it will be helpful for us to see where these children are coming from before arriving at the Vinnitsa Christian orphanage.

This afternoon the team will be going to visit Edik in the hospital while Alex and I will be meeting with the Psychiatrists. Alex and I will be doing this at 9am your time and the team will be visiting at 10:30am. Please be in prayer for these events.

Tomorrow’s schedule:

10am Service in the Litin church
2 pm Youth Conference in Litin
5 pm Dinner at Vova Pochapskiy’s home with some of the children from the orphanage.
- We’ll also be trying to create a live video feed with some of the children to my Sunday School Class in Beaufort. We’ll attempt to hook up at 11 and then go live at 12 or 12:15 in the church library. Pray this works. Our class has played such a huge role in this trip.

I created three posts of pictures. Here are the links:
Team Pics
Ice Skating
Christmas Stuff

Enjoy your day and thanks for praying

To comment on this post, please email Vince at cbcmissions@gmail.com