The perfect time for God to bring a specific person into your life and help you figure out how to take your next steps forward is often when you are at your very lowest. Sometimes it can be as simple as a kind word. Other times, it can be helping with a desperate need. And even other times, it might be someone recalling the way another person had been living out their walk with God.

In the story below as told to an SGA Storyteller by an SGA-supported pastor, God used a young man named Roman in the lives of two orphans, at two different times. It was Roman’s kindness and Christ-like living that helped open the eyes and hearts of these unbelievers. Roman was used in a way that others might not have been able to be used, because he had the same life experiences and heartache from living in the same orphanage where these two had grown up. God uses each of us for His purposes. 

We all have life experiences that have prepared us to be able to help someone else who is going through a similar situation. God has a perfect plan, and He uses His people perfectly. Please pray for Sveta, Sergei, and Roman as they continue to grow closer to the Lord and to be a light to others.  

Sveta was born in a family at risk. Her parents were alcoholics, and when Sveta was a small girl, the social services placed her in an orphanage. Soon her father ended up in prison and her mother went missing. She was a good pupil when she was in junior school, but when she became a teenager, she started to go out with a bad gang. She left her studies and started to live a wild lifestyle. At the age of 15 she got pregnant, and the parents of the boy forced her into marriage with their son, because otherwise he could be imprisoned for underage sexual abuse.

As a young family, they were given an apartment in a very difficult part of town (the area of eighth mine), the area of socially destructive people. Her life was a life of a lonely person. Her husband would keep Sveta in the home and would not allow her to go out. She spent day after day alone with the child. And they never left this difficult location. The time went by, and she bore three more children. In 2024 Sveta’s husband got heavily into debts and as a result, he hanged himself in the forest not far from their home. Sveta learned of this while she was pregnant. She did not know what to do or how to live after that. She could not stay in the apartment, because she felt she would go insane is she stayed there. She even had thoughts of committing suicide.

At that time, she started to pray for God’s help, so that she would not lose her mind. She rented her apartment out, and with this money she rented another apartment in another location. Together with her children, she moved to a new location, but she found out that the kitchen tap was leaking. Sveta did not know anyone in the new area and did not know whom to ask for help. She lived like this for a week until she met Roman in the stairwell. This is a young man from our church (he was also raised in the same orphanage as Sveta), and he lived in the same apartment building, only on the third floor. Roman helped Sveta to repair the kitchen tap, and they continued to fellowship. Roman told Sveta about Jesus Christ and invited her to come to church.

At the end of the first church service, Sveta said that she felt like a heavy weight fell off her soul and she found new hope. She started to study the Bible, and together with other youth she was able to make a trip to town for rest and recreation. There, Sveta opened her heart to Jesus. And upon completion of a baptism preparation course, she was baptized in our church.

Sergei, together with his brother, ended up in the orphanage at the age of seven, when his mother killed his father. He visited our church a lot when he became a teenager. But when he left the orphanage at the age of 18 and got a bank card with 1 million rubles debit, he started to live wildly. The money soon vanished, his friends turned away from him, and his addiction was killing him. He soon realized that in spite of being only 18, he was dying. Sergei remembered about God and a man named Roman, (the same man who had helped Sveta above) who had become a Christian and attended church. Sergei called Roman and he opened his home and his heart for him. They prayed and read the Bible together every morning. Sergei repented and was also baptized in our church. Presently those two young men pray that God would help them start a ministry for older orphans who graduate from orphanage, who often find themselves in difficult life situations and do not know what to do about it.