I Need Your Help!

Orphan Hosting....Our family was able to experience this last winter when we hosted 2 orphans from Ukraine for 5 weeks over Christmas. 

We used an organization called New Horizons for Children near Atlanta, Georgia.  Their website is www.newhorizonsforchildren.org, if you are interested in learning more about their mission.  The reason I post about this now is that their photolisting for children available for winter hosting is now online.  Many children from Ukraine and Latvia need a host family and maybe you or someone on your Facebook friends list can help!

I know some people are wondering why orphans from a foreign country?  One look at the statistics shows how badly these children need our help:  Children leave the orphanages in Ukraine at age 16.  They are expected to fend for themselves with little life or job skills training in a country that has placed little worth on the orphan.  By the time they reach age 18, 10% of the orphans have committed suicide.  60% of the girls will end up in prostitution (prostitution rings target orphan girls because they are vulnerable) and 70% of the boys will end up involved in crime.  Many of those will either die due to violence or end up in prison, where many will contract TB.

Many of the children who participate in an orphan hosting program will get adopted.  For those who are not adopted, they get to experience the love of a family and learn valuable English skills that will help them later in their lives.

Some people will point out that we first need to help those in America's foster care system before we help orphans in any other countries.   I understand their point, but the God I serve doesn't show favoritism between orphans.  He says in James 1:27 "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."  An orphan is an orphan, whether in America or Ukraine or Africa.  They ALL need our help!  

Our experience with orphan hosting in Ukraine has lead us to our decision to adopt through foster care here in North Carolina.  But I still check the New Horizons photolisting several times a week to check on how many children are going to be hosted and what scholarships are available.  Which reminds me.....if you can't host a child but have a heart for orphans, you can donate so that scholarships can be placed on the children, which greatly increases their chance of being hosted!

So, how can YOU help today?  It's SO easy....  Over the past year or so, I cut my Facebook friends list from over 500 to right about 200.  There was no reason other than I didn't want such a large friends list.  The problem I am running into now is that when I need the word to get out about something important such as orphan hosting, I have a much more limited amount of people who will hear about it.  So, PLEASE, either post a link to this blog post and encourage people to read about orphan hosting, OR "Like" New Horizons for Children on Facebook and "Share" a story and picture about one of the orphans on their wall so that more people can know about the need!