(This is the story of Good Samaritan Children’s Home, which was founded in Ukraine in 2001 but relocated to Germany last year because of the Russian invasion. Tomorrow, the writer will share about her recent short-term mission trip to the children’s home, where she and others in her group helped provide respite care and trauma healing.)
By Laura McKillip Wood
When Russia commenced a widespread attack on Ukraine in February 2022, Lena hoped to stay in her Mariupol apartment. She soon realized, however, that without heat, water, or electricity, and with constant shelling, she needed to leave.
She quickly gathered some belongings and hurried to Good Samaritan Children’s Home, where her daughter worked. Lena began to help care for the children. Soon, however, it became evident the children’s home needed to evacuate Mariupol as quickly as possible.
The children, some adults, and whatever possessions would fit were loaded into two vans that fled the city. After a long cross-country trip through a dangerous war zone, they ended up in Lage, a small town in Germany.
Lena, her daughter, and her daughter’s family settled in with the children and other staff from the children’s home. But Lena still worries about her other daughter and her son, who remain with their families in Kharkov, Ukraine, where fighting is severe. She mourns that she has missed out on more than a year of important events in their lives, including her son’s wedding.
HISTORY
Good Samaritan Children’s Home began 22 years ago when Christians in Mariupol started reaching out to the street children of the city whose parents had either died or were not able to care for them. Church members approached city authorities who agreed to let the church rent an old daycare if they would remodel it with their own funds and efforts. Authorities allowed people from the church to run the home, providing a Christian environment and Christian education. Good Samaritan Children’s Home began on Children’s Day, June 1, 2001.
Since its inception, many children have passed through the doors of Good Samaritan. Before the war began, city authorities brought children whose parents were alcoholics, drug addicts, incarcerated, or otherwise unable to care for them. Sometimes even parents brought their children to the home. Good Samaritan cared for the children until their parents could regain custody. The Ukrainian government paid for utilities, but Good Samaritan was responsible for providing for the children and paying staff salaries.
MULBERRY INTERNATIONAL
In 2015, Natasha Reimer from Mulberry International met the leadership of Good Samaritan. At that time, Mulberry was solely focused on providing aid to internally displaced people affected by Russia’s 2014 attack on eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
However, by 2020, Mulberry had developed a relationship with the children’s home and began supporting them fully. The decision to do so was all part of God’s perfect timing because not long after that, the home’s former American supporters decided to end their support. Mulberry became the home’s sole financial supporter. Now, Mulberry fully funds staff salaries and the children’s care.
A NEW LIFE
When war broke out in 2022, most of the home’s staff and all of the children evacuated to Germany, where they settled into a facility formerly used as a nursing home. The building was available because a renovation was planned and the evangelical church that owns it had already move residents to new locations. During the children’s drive from Mariupol, leadership of the old nursing home agreed to delay renovation and allow the children to move in instead.
The building is located in a farming community in the country; it provides the children with a safe, beautiful environment to adjust to life in Germany and heal from the traumas they experienced in the war and in their former lives in Ukraine.
The staff of the children’s home live on the property with their families. They provide consistent care for the children, but it has been a big adjustment for the staff.
In Ukraine, staff members lived in their own apartments, which were not part of the children’s home complex. They worked two-day shifts, then were off several days. During their days off, they enjoyed regular lives with their families. But in Germany, the staff remain on the property being used for the children’s home.
Staff members and their spouses live together with their own children, one room per family. Everyone pitches in to make this system work, but the adjustment to such a communal lifestyle has been hard.
This way of life has drawbacks and benefits. The consistent presence of the same caregivers has provided the children with security. In Ukraine, there was a large turnover of children in and out of the home. In their new home, the same group of children has stayed together for over a year, and they have blossomed.
Their old building in Mariupol still stands, the former director still manages it, and the home is now occupied by people with disabilities. Bombs have hit the home but not destroyed it. One bomb landed in the director’s office but did not explode. The staff carefully removed the bomb and repaired the structure as best they could. Two other bombs hit corners of the home and broke windows, but workers boarded-up those windows and the work has continued.
FUTURE
While those with Good Samaritan feel blessed and cared for, they do not know how long the war will last or what will happen to them after it ends. The children are still wards of the state of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government maintains contact with the director of the children’s home.
The children attend a German school and study online in Ukrainian schools. They have permission to remain in Germany until March 2024. They may be able to extend that, but no one is sure.
In the meantime, the children continue to grow and mature. They will eventually age out of the system, and they will need to make decisions about where to go and what to do after that.
“We have learned that nothing is permanent,” says Olya, the director of Good Samaritan, “not our homes, our possessions, our city, or our lives. It can all go away, and it has. We read this in the Scripture before the war, but now we know it in our hearts.”
The children’s home workers are trusting God with their futures, which is unknown.
Laura McKillip Wood, former missionary to Ukraine, lives in Papillion, Nebraska, and writes about missions for Christian Standard.
THE CHILDREN ENJOY BREAKFAST IN A GROUP SETTING IN THIS IMAGE (WHICH WE HAVE BLURRED)
0 Comments