Touching the Heart of a Caregiver Touches the Life of A Child

"I wanted to be in your second day of training, but I can not come tomorrow. It is not because the training wasn't good, it was because the little boy you spoke about all day was me.  I never had anyone there for me. I never heard warm words. I never had anyone take care of me and maybe that is why I am so sick.  Perhaps this is the reason that I work with children who are just like me."
                                                              From an orphanage social worker in Kyrgyzstan

This comment from a social worker, a young man working all by himself in a large orphanage captured our hearts.  Here is a young man, who never had the loving touch of a nurturing parent and is now charged with the task of giving something to children he never had.  Our desire is to be a help, support and encouragement to caregivers just like him who look into the eyes of wounded children everyday and don't know what to do.

There has never been a greater sense of mission and purpose in our overseas work than what is unfolding in the next few weeks and months.  For over three years, David and I have been on a journey to learn how to better help caregivers, foster parents and adoptive parents be the most successful healing person in their children's lives.And, perhaps, where needed, experience healing in their own lives.

We have read many books, sat under the training of Dr. Karyn Purvis, watched many hours of instructive DVD's, asked God for His guidance and leadership most of all and now have put all of this together in a three day training for orphanage caregivers overseas and for foster/adoptive parents in this country. The last month has been spent writing training guides and in getting the material translated into Russian and Polish.

Tomorrow morning, we leave for two weeks of work overseas, We have the privilege of again working in Ukraine and Poland.  Next week, we will be training foster mothers and social workers at the SOS Children's Village in Kiev. Later in the week, we will work with trainers in Ukraine teaching them the content of the three day series and leaving the material there for them to pass on.  The following week, we revisit our Polish friends, first speaking as a national conference and then also spending three very full days training their selected trainers on the same material.

It is still amazing to us that these remarkable opportunities have opened to us through our mission group, LAMB International and through Orphan's Promise, an orphan care ministry of The 700 Club. We want to show up and do the work we feel God has called us to.  Thank you for your encouragement to us and support of what we desire to do.....

                            Here is a video we made a couple of years ago and still motivates us today.