No one's children

When we arrived at the orphanage the kids all came out to greet our team- but they didn’t just come- they ran! They had been waiting for us- waiting for a whole year. I know, because all year they had been calling us with the same question, 'when are you coming back?'

These are 65 kids living in a government run orphanage, in the middle of nowhere, in a location that most Ukrainians have never heard of. They are no one’s children. I don't want to believe this. But this is the reality I see with my eyes.

There is a famous saying in Russian that looses a bit of the meaning when translated into English, but it says something like- “there is no such thing as ‘someone else’s child.” Meaning that children are the responsibility of everyone in a community and every child should belong…belong to someone.

I find it slightly ironic that this is an adage in the Russian language; because spending 10 days in Kolinenska leaves you thinking just the opposite. Clearly there is such a thing as ‘no one’s children- and I just spent 10 days with many them.

Reunited with sweet Tanya

Oh the government will claim these children and say that they are providing the very best, entire communities (like Kolinenska) are able to create jobs on the backs of the orphanage mechanism, but at the end of the day, they are still children who go to bed void of a mother’s kiss and a father’s hug, children that carry both visible and invisible scars, most often invoked by those that were supposed to have provided love and safety.

In lower posts I shared the stories of kids like Pasha and Natasha- and their stories do give me hope- they are the stories that often keep me going. But the reality is, my mind still goes back to the fact that these children remain stuck in a system that is anti-adoption and pro-orphanage. A system that has created children that belong to no one. And this hurts my heart.

It hurts my heart to know that the majority of these kids don’t have the legal status that allows them to be adopted and it hurts my heart to know that this system will hold them captive. The system is evil.

Like I’ve said many times- this is a war. A war against God’s children. Yes, these children belong to Him I know- but he called us to be the physical representation of that- and lately my eyes have seen more kids trapped in a system then in loving homes.

I wish I had more answers.

Camp kids and staff

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, 
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry 
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— 
when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; 
then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; 
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry 
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." 

Isaiah 58:6-10