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December 2014
Dear friends,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Last Bell’s board and staff!
We celebrate Jesus’ birth knowing everything we accomplish is through His saving grace. But we are also more grateful than we can say for the gifts you have offered in His name: for your interest and attention, your financial sacrifices, your thoughtful and encouraging words, and most of all, your prayers. Thank you for carrying our young people before the throne of God.
This year we have seen many changes in Ukraine’s culture and in the government. The country has been turned upside-down since the revolution began in November 2013, and war continues in the east.
In the midst of such change, our staff  continues serving the orphanage graduates of the Zhytomyr region. Many are now in their 20’s and having children; they’re seeking regular work and safe housing for their families. Our Stop the Cycle and legal department staff have been increasingly busy over the last year meeting these needs.
This is a photo of Lena Vodyaha and her son Kiril (2011), who have been part of our Stop the Cycle program for three years. Lena and Kiril have benefited tremendously from their relationships with Last Bell staff, especially Andre and Oksana Pankyeyev.
During one of their group meetings, Oksana asked a leading question: “Do you remember things you hated about your childhood?” Through conversations within this group, Lena realized she was afraid of hurting Kiril the way she had been hurt, so she was too “soft” with him (compared to the other little boys, Kiril was out of control). So she began to “discipline rightly in love” in the way Oksana taught.
Kiril is now in first grade. He gets good marks at school and is very good at math. Just two months ago he received clothing from friends in America and Germany. Lena is always grateful for these gifts, since clothes are her biggest need for Kiril.
Lena and Kiril have also been well-served by Last Bell’s legal department. They have been living with Kiril’s father and his parents for the last eight years. For most of those years, however, the family refused to register Lena to their address. This meant she couldn’t have a passport, the primary form of ID in Ukraine (used like a driver’s license); and for many months this prevented her from being paid, though she continued working at her city landscaping job.
The staff went with Lena from one city department to another, trying to find a way to solve this problem. They found out the law required cities to offer a special kind of registration for people like Lena – but Zhytomyr simply didn’t provide this service!
Eventually they registered Lena using the Last Bell administrative office, which allowed her to receive paychecks. More recently, Kiril’s grandparents finally permitted Lena to register to their home address so Kiril could go to first grade. We praise God for this!
The Last Bell staff play immense roles in the lives of our Stop the Cycle girls. Lena frequently calls Oksana for advice and sometimes stops by just to have tea. She and the other young moms have also developed deep relationships with each other through the moms’ meetings. They actively support one another in beautiful ways, from babysitting to sharing their homes for extended periods of time.
A Stop the Cycle meeting at the office
of organization “I Am Mom”
Here’s what Lena has to say about the Stop the Cycle program:
“It helps me not to stir up the same problems my parents did for me. [It helps] Kiril to understand that life is good…Without the help of this project it would be difficult to raise my child.”
None of this would be possible for Lena or the other young moms without donations from people who care about orphans. Will you join us in this work? Your generosity will meet so many needs.
Year-end gifts ease the added costs of having many extra kids staying in our family homes over the holidays. Your timely seasonal gifts to Last Bell also enable special Christmas and New Year’s activities for all our young people. A commitment to monthly giving in 2015 will help us keep the doors open to offer love, mentorship, and practical help to young adults with desperate needs.
As our ministry grows, we are seeking to increase our board of directors and our volunteer base. Are you interested in going deeper with Last Bell? We would like our team to grow with individuals who have specific strengths:
◦ managerial or administrative gifting
◦ team-building skills
◦ relationship-cultivating talents
◦ community insider connections
If organizational development appeals to you, we would like to hear about it, particularly if you live in the Indianapolis area. We desire deeper engagement in fundraising, concerted volunteer coordination, and further staff development. Please be in touch if you are interested. There are many ways to support Last Bell’s life-giving work in Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
We have faith that God’s power – and the love he showed us by coming into this world as one of us – will continue to give life to our advocacy for orphanage graduates. Thank you for your support in 2014! We look forward to seeing what God will do with us together in 2015.
“O come, let us adore Him!”
God’s peace to you this season,
the Last Bell Board of Directors:
Glenn Grosh, Ellen Jackson, Don Lawton, Dave Liebel, and Irene Millikan
Donations can be mailed to:
Last Bell Ministries
PO Box 247
Atlanta, IN 46031-0247
Or you can click on the Donate button at the end of this letter.
PS: Below you can read several more comments from our young moms about the Stop the Cycle program. They are quite articulate about how Last Bell has helped them!
Lena & Kiril, 2014
Stop the Cycle moms reflect on the program:
“If not for this program my kids and I would be starving, naked and barefooted.” – Vika
“They teach us how to avoid family conflicts, how to have good relationships with our kids.”
– Angela
“It unites and strengthens… Through it we have support both moral and material. It is a great help for people who feel abandoned and unprotected. With the help of this program I feel different. I’m taken care of. My daughter learned about God in a camp for believers. I can see how her life started to change for the better. She started to pray and realized that God is our strength, help, faith, our Father. Because of this program my relationship with my husband is much improved.” – Marina
“They show us and our children the true way to God. They provide shoes, clothes, and food to us; we also get help with medicine… The leaders are like parents to us and grandparents to our kids.” – Natalia
“They show us the right way. They help us determine what is right and what is wrong. They help us to establish relationships with friends.” – Lubov
“Here we have people who substitute for our parents. When you don’t know where to go for advice, you can be sure the leaders will listen to you and give you advice. Many of us went to the orphanage when we were still little, and we have no clue how to build a family, how to raise a child. But here we have people who are willing to help.
“I’m sure that if not for this program, many of our mothers would give their kids to the orphanage. When you have a child and the government doesn’t provide a place to live, many people in despair start to drink alcohol and other bad things… They don’t have people like our leaders who can help. And that’s why they often do the same things their parents did to them.
“But with the help of our leaders, we bring up our kids and learn how to do it right, not to lose our temper and hit them. Unfortunately this was how we were brought up, and so we would imitate that bad way if not for our leaders’ training.
“We have training in bringing up kids at our meetings and during summer sea camps, and so we know that what we sow in our kids’ hearts now, we’ll harvest later.” – Yulia |
