Update - 12 NOV, 2011

Anya Goliakova

The excerpt below comes from my friend Georges Carillet. He is President of Commonwealth International University in Simferopol, Ukraine (Crimea). Georges is one of the many contacts I've made there during the years I've spent ministering to orphans there. In fact Georges has indirectly impacted our team's ability to minister in Simferopol. He began teaching the Gospel many years ago through the university he and his wife LaVergne, founded. Several of our team mentors came to know Christ because of Georges and LaVergne.
Below, Georges speaks of two young women who work in a state run orphan facility. Our team worked in this same orphanage in December, 2010. These two young ladies, Anya Goliakova and Viktoria (Vika) Vdovychenko, are also members of our team and have served as YouthReach 12-3-1 Mentors. Please read Georges article and keep Anya and Vika in your prayers.

It is our hope that they will be able to join us this December as we journey to Simferopol.

From Georges Carillet - CIU Newsletter....

Vika Vdovichenko

"Another prayer request: orphans and those who work with them. Our two Disney interns that returned in the summer were looking for work with college students and children. Recently they found work in a state orphanage boarding school in Simferopol. Caring social work is always demanding and stressful, but add to that the corruption that they see and it is almost overwhelming. Allegedly, even the Ministry of Education is using the orphanage school to launder money and otherwise do financially corrupt things. Makes it hard for the kids to get the chance that they need. One of the results: they found most of the kids without soap and shampoo. Hopeful Hearts (Kathy Drane) found out about the need and bought soap and shampoo for the 80 to 100 kids.

By the way, these two young women exemplify the kind of fruit that CIU has been blessed to help cultivate. Disney invited them to become their employees but they chose to return to Ukraine to seek paid ministry positions, of which there are very few and are poorly paid. For several months they were -- as they were when they were our students -- unpaid volunteers working with college students and orphans. Then a "paid ministry" position came up for one of them and then the other at the same orphanage. "Ministry" because these young women understand that that is what God calls them to; "paid" because they are paid something as employees of the state, though not enough to live on. Pray for them and "their children."

One of these 'ministers' came to Christ at CIU and was baptized by me just two years ago (featured in our October 6, 2009 newsletter). Pray for CIU's unique ministry in fulfilling the Great Commission in Ukraine -- making disciples of Christ who make disciples of Christ."

Grace and Peace.
Joel