Orphan Camp with purpose | Ukraine

This mid June we had a great event which most of kids were looking forward to - summer VBS camp program. We had 90 Loubetein kids, 15 volunteers from Kharkov, Ukraine churches and 10 of our staff participated in the camp. It was a good size group of those who really wanted to participate. God has blessed us with a good weather for the whole week of the camp.

The name of the camp program - "Freedom. Where God is - there is Freedom".

Our main goal through this camp was to explain to our kids the importance of the correct understanding of freedom (comes with responsibility). Through our almost 10 years of CCP efforts we have seen so many kids who would act as they would want without thinking of consequences.

We had 4 different teams competing in crafts, sports, logic, treasury search, music, friendship making. Each team was led by our staff, 5 church volunteers were helping to encourage, other staff were involved in program details, PA, supplies. 6 days of fun.

So far we had 6 different camp programs: Loubetin VBS, Izume home visit, SN "CCP launch" camp, Sach VBS, Zap - Matvievka VBS, Loubetin - Zap orphans exchange visits. Please pray for other 14 camp programs we plan to have in July - Aug. Currently we are having Sach VBS camp with Tom's US team. It is a busy summer we have...

Yours in Him,

Denis and the Lifesong-Ukraine Team

"our plans" vs. "His plans"

wow...powerful note from Roland & LaNae Sanchez.  We had the privilege of helping to remove the financial barriers through a Lifesong Adoption Grant/Loan

Dear Lifesong,

A year ago we set out on our adoption journey with plans to adopt a boy to 'round out our family'. Shortly thereafter, however, our agency asked to consider twin deaf girls...We wrestled in our hearts for months. Could we let go of our plans and embrace what the Lord had for us?

Would we follow where God was so clearly leading?

By God's grace, we traded our dreams for His...

Thank You, Lifesong, for being a tool that God used to make it possible.

Roland and LaNae Sanchez

an orphan's life comes 'full circle' | Orphans Deserve Better

Great "Your Orphan Story" from www.orphansdeservebetter.org

 

Adoption: A Lifelong Love Story

In 1956 I was born to a 16 year old unwed mother. Given the mores of the day she was expected to quickly marry her teenage boyfriend. Sixteen months later they had another little boy. Overwhelmed by it all, my mother left us when I was 2 years old and my brother was 6 months. Soon after our father left as well. We were put into a foster home. Our foster parents brought us to their church where a young couple with no childen of their own fell in love with us and decided to adopt us both.

That selfless act of love changed my life's destiny forever. I grew up wanting to adopt someday myself as a way of giving back for what I had been blessed with. God, however had another path for me to travel. Although blessed with four children and eight grandchildren an unfulfilled passion to change the lives of abandoned and orphaned children in the way mine was changed still burned within me.

Then one day in 2005 I was approached by...Lifesong for Orphans. That meeting was another life changing event for me and the forerunner of many more to come. These past years as I have contributed to, solicited for and traveled to Ukraine, India and Zambia as an orphan advocate I have witnessed and experienced first hand both the agony and the ecstacy of the orphan experience.

I have sat with my arm around the shoulder of a little girl in Zambia whose mother had died of AIDS and whose father was about to die from it as well. I wiped her tears and tried to reassure her as she agonized over what her future held.

I have been hugged tightly by orphaned teenagers in Ukraine who were overwhelmed by the opportunity to be able to live in new transition homes built through Lifesong donations rather than be exiled into the squalor and degradation of the state run dormatories once they aged out of the orphanages.

I have been mobbed by love-starved, orphaned children in the slums of India who are reduced to tears of awe and wonder over the idea that rich, white Americans actually care enough that they exist to not only come visit them but find ways to improve their lots in life as well.

I could blog endlessly about the myriad of ways that these orphans have touched and enriched my life. As a kindred spirit to them from my life's beginning I ask only that people hear their stories and their cries before buying into any misconceptions or misrepresentations of what or who they are. To me they are truly the cups that God has asked us to pour the cool water of compassion and caring into....the least of His here below and yet primed to be the greatest in His eternal kingdom.

by Bob Hoerr (IL)

Joy is shining through

A little glimpse at the children through these pics...

Several of the older girls are attending 2year and 4 year nursing colleges.  You can't miss their smiles!

They are happy to be a part of the Lifesong-India family -- and it shows!

the life of an outcast

"...these deformed hands receiving some money tell a story from a present chapter in this leper's life, which could be entitled "Outcast" The first chapters are known only by the leper and God. We can only guess what his life was once like.

Was he a child when the patches first appear on his skin?

Perhaps his parens were wealthy or poor. Was he an illiterate poor farmer or was he a schoolteacher, a doctor, or a merchant?

It wouldn't have mattered. He would've been forced to leave his village and his family...leaving his wife and children."

Lifesong-India has the privilege and opportunity to love him, help meet some of his basic needs today...

~ Bob Stoll (started orphan care work 30 years ago in India)