Praying for LB this fall

Thank you, friends, for your generous prayers for our staff, our administration, and our young people! Here are some specific ways you can remember us as the weather cools and the leaves start to turn:

From staff members Yulia Los and Luba Yaroshuk, on behalf of the Ukrainian staff:

• Pray for a new location for the Support Center that can accommodate all the large groups of orphanage graduates we host, plus the youth who simply drop by to visit us. As our reach grows, our facilities must follow!
• Pray for Yulia Los and Abram and Tanya Krevoruchko, who were previously working at the Shelter. Because the Shelter is now undergoing renovation, they don’t have a “home base” for their Last Bell work. They continue to meet with our young people even as they wait for a new Support Center facility.

A few specific prayer requests for individual youth:

• Masha Pankyeyeva, whose roommate is going to college, needs to find a new place to live, and she doesn’t have a very good job.
• Zhenya, from the Educational Outreach program, wants to be a missionary in Africa. He has another year at trade school. Pray for this dream and for wisdom in pursuing it.
• A few requests for former Shelter residents, who are taking steps toward independence: pray the government will pay for college for Alona Varss (Last Bell has already paid for September’s tuition); pray for Sveta and Alona Varss both, that the apartment they are waiting on – which the government has promised them – will indeed be ready in January; and pray for another young man who has his “head in the clouds” (the same phrase we would use in America!) and dreams about going to America, while not wisely using the resources he has. Pray he would see another way forward and be willing to work hard for it.

From our director Megan Hershey, on behalf of the U.S. staff and board:

• Pray God would continue to strengthen our ministry, and give energy and creative vision to our staff and board.
• Prayers of gratitude for our U.S. volunteers, who give tirelessly and passionately toward our work with orphanage graduates.
• Direction for our 2017 Strategic Plan and the resources to align with the vision God gives us.
• Pray for sustainable office space for our U.S. administration.
• Pray for God to do transformative work in the lives of our youth through our Ukrainian staff and volunteers.