ORPHANED BUT NOT ABANDONED: CHURCH MEMBERS ADOPT RUSSIAN ORPHANAGE
MAY 23, 2007
Since most people aren’t able to adopt an orphan, members of Lee’s Summit Community Church decided to adopt an orphanage instead.
This spring, eight members of the church visited 88 orphans in Sapaschok, Russia, to let them know they are loved by God and people halfway around the world. Children at the orphanage said it was the best spring break they ever had.
The team, led by volunteer Tim Hange of Lee’s Summit Community Church, worked 12-hour days leading the children in a week of activities including a paper airplane derby, crafts, T-shirt painting and journaling. They also taught the children English and played baseball, basketball and games of Jenga and Uno.
The trip to the orphanage, about 120 miles east of Moscow, was in partnership with Children’s HopeChest, a Christian organization that has worked with more than 10,000 orphans throughout the world to help them develop the skills they need to become independent adults.
“What Children’s HopeChest asked us to do was to go over and give these children a sense of family,” Hange says. “We weren’t there to fix the orphanage. We were there to just enjoy these children and let them know they are loved.”
LSCC officially began its partnership with the orphanage last summer when it kicked off its sponsorship campaign. Approximately 50 members of the church, located at 1440 S.W. Jefferson, sponsor a child at the orphanage. Monthly sponsorship helps to provide clothing, medical care, healthy food, vitamins, educational materials and an adult mentor from outside the orphanage.
The philosophy of Children’s HopeChest is for members of a church or organization to sponsor an entire orphanage. The organization asks representatives from the groups to visit the orphanages annually and spend time with the children.
“When they see that you traveled halfway around the world and you are going to live in their small town for a week and just enjoy being with them … I cannot tell you the inestimable value that has to these children,” Hange says. “It makes them feel wanted, it makes them feel unique, it makes them feel loved and special.”
In addition to leading the HopeChest ministry at Lee’s Summit Community Church, Hange and his wife Karen adopted two Russian children more than four years ago.
While this was the church’s first relationship-building trip, it won’t be the last. Plans for next year are already taking shape. In the meantime, the church is still striving to find sponsors for an additional 20 children at the orphanage.
Team members from Lee’s Summit Community Church included: Hange and his daughter Alisha, Kim Forton and her son Eliot, Doris Jones, Dale Williamson, Lori Brown and Gary Pycior.
“Children are children no matter where you go,” says Williamson, a member of the team. “They love to have their pictures taken. They love to laugh and they need to know that somewhere someone loves them and that they are important.”
More information is available about Children’s HopeChest at www.hopechest.org. More information is available about Lee’s Summit Community Church at www.lscckc.org.
Contact |
Please contact Roy Harryman, director of communications, for more information at 816.524.6786 x104.