On Saturday 24th April, our Odessa manager, Peter Emelyanov, sent these amazing photos of the roof of the House of Hope all complete. The beige, smaller section of building in the foreground is the original two storey building. See how much bigger the whole building is now – built over the top of the original building and around it. The original building only covered 72 m² of space. The whole building with the new extensions (four storeys) covers 295 m² of land. Soon, as we finish the interior a section at a time, we’ll be taking in 50 to 70 homeless children – and that’s just the start.

 

Then these photos arrived of the House of Hope extensions with all the windows in place – another great breakthrough from the Lord because of your faithful support. The 16 builders whom we have been paying, have worked in coordinated shifts around the clock for the last 3 months to bring the building to this stage.

 

Now the interior must be done – one dormitory and bathroom facility at a time, until all is complete. That’s a wonderful testimony of God’s goodness and your faithful giving. Thank you so much for your indispensable partnership in the Gospel.

 

 

The leaders at the House of Hope and the homeless children living there at the moment, together with some of the builders who were free, had a celebration meal with pizzas, and sang God’s praises.

The timeline for the building of the House of Hope and the Extensions was like this:

In July 2012, the Odessa leaders bought an old house in a fairly remote area south of the city, about a kilometre from the Black Sea coast. They began doing renovations on the old house that took just over 4 years to the end of 2016, using very willing but unqualified volunteers, to create the original two-storey building.
They decided (or rather God decided for them) to start building extensions on the right side of the House in April 2019. A contracting company had excess building materials left over after they’d finished a building contract nearby. They offered them to Peter for free and offered to excavate the new foundations for free as well.

These new extensions started with volunteers working with their longstanding builder, Valera, but in January 2021, we made the decision to bring in builders from Western Ukraine and offer to pay them. Very quickly the original handful of builders grew to 16 qualified builders who are working together so well, in shifts around the clock.

It’s taken only two years to get the new building of four storeys near completion with those qualified builders working on the project. We realised that could never have been done with just volunteer helpers. It was God’s initiative, and His “whisper in my ear” to pay the builders, that moved everything into top gear.

You have provided the funds to do all this, and that gave us the confidence to make these plans. We could not have done this without your generous financial gifts. You are a vital part of God’s team in this project that would have fallen down without you.
We met these wonderful people in 2016 and started teaching the leaders and homeless youngsters how to bring people to the Lord and help them to grow in their faith. We had many meetings that saw them growing in their faith and their ability to lead people to Jesus. They had started a little church in the city of Odessa that saw growth to about 100 people in its first year because of their evangelistic zeal.
This was the beginning of training and equipping that was the preparation for these twelve months of Rescue Missions to many villages in the Odessa province.

These Rescue Missions to 358 country villages in the Odessa Province reached over 8,900 needy children. The rescue teams have given out over 5,360 Survival Packs of food and hygiene products to some 2,000 destitute families and needy children and also distributed 5,000 picture Bibles. About 10,000 poor adults and children have been led to Christ so effectively that these new believers are now leading their neighbours to Christ.

You can see that your wonderful support hasn’t only been vital for the building work, but also for the –
Rescue Missions – making plans to visit so many villages each week (guided by Child Protection Services), planning the budgets for the foodstuffs, medicines, hygiene products and Bibles in the Survival Packs.

The costs of fuel and the repairs and maintenance of the old vehicles and the purchase of a newer van for this purpose.

Keeping the Bible study, sports equipment, and school materials up to date and available for the children at the House of Hope.

Providing the personal needs of the House of Hope Children – food, medicines, toiletries, heating and clothes (especially for the cold winter) – this is going to increase substantially when 50 to 70 more homeless children come into the House.

Meeting the budgets for the :

• Disabled Baby Orphanage – Pampers, catheters, and specific Description: Brain Damaged Babies Mar 2020 a tonics for the babies’ immune systems.
• The Children’s Cancer Hospital – for IV equipment and serums to boost the sick children’s immune systems. This help, a few years ago, got Peter installed as the Chaplain there, and he has led so many needy children and their parents to the Lord.

God bless you richly with harvests of amazing answers to your prayers in respect of all the wonderful “seeds” that you’ve sown into God’s precious harvest fields.

Love and blessings,
        Dave & Margurita

“The love of Christ compels us”