This year is a year of dramatic change for our church in general and for the youth group ministry in particular.  Aside from the election of the new senior pastor, our church, and especially youth has been overcome with the missionary spirit. 

Mission trip to Ukraine
We dreamed of going to Eastern Europe for a mission trip for quite a while.  This year youth leadership team made a firm decision that we were going to take that step and organize a life-changing event for our youth kids.  A small team of eight people was assembled and after a period of training and preparation went to Mariupol, Ukraine.  On our 10 day tour we primarily focused our efforts on children's drug rehabilitation center "Republic Pilgrim".  What's different about this orphanage is its emphasis on homeless kids, many of whom had drug addictions and some contracted the HIV virus. 

It is a shocking how many children in Ukraine literarly live on the streets!  The church is Mariupol wasn't going to take it much longer and decided to do something about this problem.  They simply started picking kids up on the streets and bringing them to newly acquired abandoned building, which was rebuilt.  In the short 7 or 8 years, the ministry had an obvious impact on the city's child homelessness - child homelessness has been largely contained and is now a much smaller problem. 

As we were spending time with these precious kids and teenagers, we could help but be amazed at the miracle of transformation God can accomplish through dedicated people.  I could hardly imagine any of them on the streets, inhaling glue, shooting up or smoking, yet it was their past.  We also spent couple of days cleaning up one of the orphanage run satelite foster homes.  By the end of the trip, we became very close with all of the children and I can't say our departure was entirely tearless.