His amazing love…

(see update below)
By Catherine Nolan, a college student, who spent all summer ministering children at Children Are Our Hope Home in Vinnitsa.

Sixteen year old, Vicka’s words still echo in my mind, “I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you.” Clear memories of Misha’s face, wet with tears because I was leaving to return to America remain close to my heart. As a twenty-year-old college student, I daily wonder who am I to deserve so much love. I never could have imagined that my life could have had such a huge impact on someone else’s life, but in two months, God did something so amazing between a few Ukrainian teenagers and me… His love changed our lives.

Children and helpers from Children Are Our Hope Home

I can’t really put in to words all that God did this summer. He rescued seven children from their worldly fate that the orphanage provided and is changing their lives daily by His love. I consider it a privilege to have been a very small part of the work that UCP is doing there. I will never again be able to look at the children at Children Are Our Hope Home as orphans for I know God has a huge family for them in this home and to me they are brothers and sisters that I will forever cherish.

What amazed me most about this trip is that I had nothing to give these children, but Christ’s love. I can’t come back to America and tell about the church I helped build or the testimony I gave that led thousands to Christ. I can only say that even in the simplest things such as peeling potatoes or playing soccer with the children after dinner, God worked. Even with a language barrier that at times seemed impossible, God let powerful friendships form between us.

Catherine with Vicka and Sergei

Never before had I experienced such acceptance, and love as I found at Children Are Our Hope Home. This acceptance extended even further than to each child there. As I saw Eric Mumford so willing to wait for God’s perfect timing to deal with individual burdens each child carried, I saw the acceptance and patience that God has given me as he has taken me from a broken, helpless state where I needed ministry into a place where I was able to powerfully minister. Each time I reached out to the children, God rewarded me over and over again. I saw that my love was

________________________________________

An update on Children Are Our Hope Home, Vinnitsa Ukraine

Praise the Lord for this year of establishing a home to love and nurture children from our orphanages in Vinnitsa. As God placed this idea into our hearts and gave us a vision for Ukraine, many people participated in making this possible. Seeing and spending time with each of these first six children is the greatest gift. God is healing their hearts, educating, nurturing and teaching them. We are working hard to impart to them what they need with nutrition, doctors, dentists, clothes, academic tutors, and especially, love and discipline.

Pray for us as we investigate taking into our family a pair of brothers Sasha (9) and Sergei (7), and also as we go to an orphanage to choose two more children, possibly girls or siblings to come to us in the spring. It is a daunting task, especially when the orphanage we will go to is the poorest in the region with 250 children. When visitors come all their little faces are pressed to the frosty windows to see what is going on. It is absolutely freezing inside the buildings. People often ask us how we can choose. Of course we do experience anxiety, but so far the Lord has chosen them for us through unusual circumstances and divine appointments. We have to trust Him to do it and pay careful attention to His direction.