Three Friends, One Dancer, & Nastya

Camp season is drawing to a close! This is one of our favorite times of the year, when we get to spend 24 hours/day with the orphanage graduates we care about so much. Thank you for giving and praying.

Three Friends

In 2017, we held a sea camp for our Educational Outreach youth. Three guys, Vitya, Sasha, and Andrey, all attended. These three lived in the same social dorm and were already friends. At camp they grew closer to each other and to Last Bell’s staff.

We’ve shared about two of them before:

• We helped Vitya with eye surgery a few months ago, and now he has a job at an auto factory.
• At camp last year, Sasha shared about his dream of working with computers. We helped him apply to a Christian IT school for orphans called Hebron, and he’s attended there for the last year.

This summer, Hebron held an IT camp, and Sasha was one of the camp leaders! Three of our orphanage graduates attended, including Sasha’s friend Andrey. Last Bell staff members Andrey Krevoruchko and Sasha Terehov accompanied them. The camp was intended to bring potential IT students together.

Andrey was chosen immediately to study IT at Hebron in the fall, and our other two guys are waiting to see if they’ll get in. We’re so glad for each of these three friends to be moving forward toward a positive future, thanks in part to opportunities and relationships that unfolded at summer camp!

English Camp Provides Job Skills

We welcomed a team of Americans in June who volunteered with our English Language Camp. English skills are important for our youth taking college entrance exams. And it may provide other opportunities! (See many English Camp photos on our Facebook page.)

One orphanage graduate who attended English Camp, Andrey, is a DJ and a dancer.

Andrey loved English Camp. His dream is to visit Los Angeles. After camp, he began looking for a job, and found one at a hotel in Egypt. Now he uses his English skills with visitors every day! He greets people (mostly guests from Europe), assists with activities, and leads the “evening program” for guests including exercises. Speaking English is a challenge for him but he’s trying hard.

Our Youth Give Back

Beyond hosting our own camps, Last Bell networks with organizations like Hebron to make sure each orphanage graduate has the right camp opportunity.

This summer, Nastya, a young woman with disabilities currently living in our Shelter Crisis Housing facility, volunteered with a Christian organization called Wide Awake at a camp for children with disabilities. These children from an orphanage in Romaniv are severely disabled, and the Christians who started Wide Awake found them living in particularly dehumanizing circumstances many years ago. We’re so proud of Nastya for giving back!

Thanks for praying for the precious hours and days of summer camp! Our last camp with Educational Outreach students is winding down in the Carpathian Mountains right now. Please pray that God would continue the transformational work of camp throughout the coming year.

Watch for another update soon about our Stop the Cycle family camps.