Karen gave me permission to repost her post...
I am so excited about this ministry in Ukraine! This has been one of my own personal dreams for Ukraine.
Karen's blog is on my sidebar . It is called Beauty From The Ashes.
Please consider supporting her ministry.
Strength renewed!
I'm overwhelmed with gratitude! This past weekend our conference "Strengtheing
Families" took place in Kiev at the Radisson hotel (who gave an amazing discount) and it was an
unforgettable weekend for nearly 100 foster and adoptive couples from across
Ukraine. The couples that attended
are parenting a total of 377 foster and adoptive children!
There is a growing movement of foster care and adoption
among Christians in Ukraine, but to date, trainings and resources have been
very limited. This was our second
conference we have hosted with the goal of providing resources and
encouragement for these families, many of which are in the midst of very
difficult circumstances.
To
say that these families left feeling renewed and
refreshed would be an understatement. If you can imagine, many of the
couples
in attendance were from remote villages and had never been to Kiev,
let alone had they eaten in a restaurant or stayed in a four star hotel!
People were walking around wide-eyed and in gratitude all weekend-long
and I've never heard thank you so many times! Part of the goal
of the weekend was to pamper these couples, who work tirelessly day in
and day
out with little rest...and I think we succeeded in this goal. The
smiles
on the faces throughout the weekend were simply amazing!
We
were blessed to have a team of specialists and psychologists travel
from the US and Canada to be a part of our event. Seminars included, "Healing a Mother's Heart" ,"Strengthening Attachment through play", "The Biochemistry of Fear", "Strengthening Your Marriage" and "Learning the Essentials for Caring for Children
with a History of Trauma" as well as others.
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| At one of the seminars |
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| Team of speakers and organizers |
Paul Pennington of Hope for Orphans,
a ministry of Family Life, also partnered with us in the event and was
the Saturday evening key-note speaker. His ministry has a heart to see
the church play the key role in solving the orphan crisis, and he
brought great encouragement to our Ukrainian audience and challenged us
all towards to bring the message back to our churches.
Here was some of the written feedback we got at the end
of the conference. Reading the response of the people who were there has really confirmed that we were doing
just what God wanted us to do!
"We had never
had time with other Christian foster parents and didn't understand the issues
in our family that were happening and why. This time all together was so
important. We know we are not alone.
For us being here was truly a miracle. It was like a dream coming true. There simply are not words
to describe the feelings of thankfulness that we have experienced."
"Such
a
conference lifted our wings and gave us the strength to go further. We
don't feel alone anymore. Thank you for this gift, for the
attention, for the smiles, for the kindness and for care that I have not
seen
anywhere else."
"These kind
of conferences are really needed for instruction, strengthening, learning and
support of our families. We are
grateful to God for the organization of this wonderful and helpful conference.
God healed our hearts and gave us new strength. Thank you!"
"In
going home we
will forever remember and analzye everthing we learned and wrote down
here. We
have many people with whom we can share what we learned. God bless you.
We believe that through us God will continue to spread the revelation
about adoption."
And
none of this would have been possible with my AMAZING team that I get
the privilege of working with everyday. Galina and Oksana are the angels
in my office who are simply amazing at executing tasks and I would not
be able to do what I do without them! Both of them put in countless
extra hours the week of the conference to make sure that it was an
overwhelming success.
Thank
you to all of you who gave towards this conference and who prayed for
the families who'd be coming. God provided beyond our needs and I was
amazed to see all the sources from which prayer and finances flowed. We
had a moment of silence and prayer on the last morning and it was truly
an indescribable moment. It was so evident that the Spirit of God was at
work ministering the hearts of his children and there was hardly a dry
eye in the room when I opened my eyes. It's exciting to see God at work
in the lives of these Ukrainian families and to know that hundreds of
children will be reaping the benefits!
