The Overwhelming Need for SGA’s Orphans Reborn Ministry

Life in Far East Russia can be challenging at best. The winters are bitter cold, with temperatures exceeding 50 below zero Fahrenheit. Living in this harsh region of Russia takes its toll on families, where the divorce rate is double that of the United States. This region is among the highest for alcohol abuse, which impacts many families.

Such living causes children to suffer the most from neglect and abuse. Many in this region are housed in 334 state-run orphanages. Nearly 70 percent of these children have a living parent or guardian. With broken hearts, these children suffer daily with growing hopelessness, as they look for their parents to come and take them home—and the parents never come. I have visited orphanages where the children crowded around me just for a chance to hold my hand, get a hug, or sit on my lap and ask me to take them home with me. For these dear ones in the Far East, hope is even harder to find. 

As many of you know, through SGA’s Orphans Reborn ministry, we have been serving amazing Bible-teaching local churches as they reach out to orphans with the Gospel. We often hear of orphans coming to faith and being totally transformed by God’s grace. We know of orphans who have been saved, and after leaving the orphanage upon reaching young adulthood, have continued on as part of Orphans Reborn teams themselves. They love to reach younger orphans for Christ just as they were reached. 

In the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, a local church supported through the Orphans Reborn ministry lovingly visited such children. Then suddenly, the door to the orphanage tragically closed. At that time, this was the only ministry to orphans in Russia’s Far East that had requested support. However, under SGA’s new Reach Russia Now initiative, this is already changing dramatically! Plans are being implemented to visit ten orphanages. 

So much more can be done to love the fatherless in the Far East of Russia, and to comfort their broken hearts. Today there are churches in four key regions of the Far East ready to establish ministries at 10 orphanages. Please join us in praying for sponsors for this. Please join with us so that more churches can be planted and amore orphan children can be reached with the Gospel through Orphans Reborn. These children are crying out for hope, a hope that only our Lord can provide.