Statistics

I asked a friend about some statistics in regards to orphans in Ukraine and another friend of mine was collecting some facts about Ukraine for her daughter’s school project.  These are some of the facts they shared with me.

After Russia, the Ukrainian republic was far and away the most important economic component of the former Soviet Union, producing about four times the output of the next-ranking republic.  Its fertile black soil generated more than one-fourth of Soviet agricultural output, and its farms provided substantial quantities of meat, milk, grain, and vegetables to other republics.

Area: Ukraine is the largest country in Europe. But it is about the size of Texas.

Terrain: Almost the entire country of Ukraine is a flat plain

Land use:  Ukraine has extremely fertile black-earth soils in the central and southern portions, totaling more than a half of the territory. According to the estimates, arable land is 56%, permanent crops: 2%, meadows and pastures: 12%, forest and woodland: 10%, other: 20%. In 1990 irrigated land was 26,000 sq. km.

Population:49,811,174

State language: Ukrainian. Other languages: Russian, Romanian, Polish, Hungarian.

Former: Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Independence: December 1, 1991 (from Soviet Union).

Foods:

Varenyky - Stuffed Dumplings Mashed potato filling with onions.

Borscht - Beet base soup with some potatoes, carrots, onions and meat when available.

Orphanages in the Ukraine

Right now, there are estimated to be over 176,000 children living in orphanages in Ukraine. Official numbers vary, and it is difficult to pinpoint the exact number. Reports from 100,000 to 200,000 exist, with 150,000 being the most commonly cited number. There are officially another 100,000 in state care, such as semi-orphanages and other forms of care. Whatever the final number, the reality for these children is bleak.

Around the age of 16, orphans must leave the orphanage. There is no further funding for them to remain in the orphanage and because of overcrowding, it is not possible for them to stay longer, they are without the basic skills to protect or provide for themselves.

The statistics are extremely sad:

60 - 70% of boys leaving the orphanage will become involved in crime
60 - 70% of girls leaving the orphanage will become involved in prostitution
About 3 in 6 of these children will commit suicide before their mid-20’s, 10% to 15% will commit suicide before the age of 18.

There are two types of children who make up the orphan population in Ukraine (but we have these types of orphans in our system as well).

Full orphans:  In this situation, both of the children's parents are dead.  The child is in state care because no other family is available to care for them.

Social orphans:  In this situation, which is more common, one or both of the child's parents are alive, but either unable or unwilling to care for the child.  This can be due to a variety of reasons.  Some of the children in orphanages, perhaps 10%, still have a  living parent who hopes to live with them again one day.  These children live at the orphanage until their parents can find a way to support them.  Sometimes these parents visit children or take them home on weekends, and sometimes this is not the case.

Why so many orphans?

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe, in 1991 it achieved independence from the Soviet Union. Although this independence brought joy to many people, it also brought massive instability and economic turmoil. The economy is finally growing again, but millions of people live in poverty across Ukraine.

Unemployment - Many of the factories and industries that employed people during Soviet times have been closed, leaving people without any means of earning money. Although some people have become very wealthy, most are unemployed.

Poverty - With unemployment and the absence of social programs funded by the government comes poverty. Many people struggle to find enough money to buy food, clothing and medicine for their children.

Collapse of Social Programs - The old socialist day-care programs are long gone, and there is no well-established private industry to meet this need.

Alcoholism and drug abuse - As these problems have grown, so have rates of alcohol and drug abuse. Unfortunately, many children are either abandoned in the hospitals by these mothers or are taken by the state when the mother fails to provide adequately for the child.

Poor medical care leading to early death - Some children become full orphans (both parents are dead) because of a lack of access to health care and the effects of poverty on their parents.

Other social problems - As in our own society, other social problems lead to children living in orphanages. These include abuse and neglect. Sometimes, children are taken by the Ukrainian state in order to provide them with a safe environment.

I am writing primarily about Ukraine because that is where we are adopting from, but here are some other statistics that might get your attention.

143,000,000 orphans in the world today spend an average of 10 years in an orphanage or foster home.  Approximately 250,000 children are adopted annually, but…

            Every year 14,050,000 children still grow up as orphans and age out of the system

            Every day 38,493 children age out

Every 2.2 seconds another orphan child ages out with no family to belong to and no place to call home.

Many of these children accept job offers that ultimately result in their being sold as slaves.

Millions of girls are sex slaves today, simply because they were unfortunate enough to grow up as orphans.

How can we as followers of Christ allow this to happen?  Why aren’t we doing something about this?  Aren’t we called to defend those who cannot defend themselves?  Aren’t we commanded to care for the widows and orphans, to be fathers to the fatherless?  Is there something you can do to help children who need help?

Not everybody can adopt children.  Not every home is appropriate for bringing in children who may have had to walk through some very hard places.  But, I believe there are more homes out there who can adopt but aren't because they don't know the severity of the problem.  It simply is not on their radar.  I hope some of this information that I am sharing will get some one's attention enough to start asking if they can.  If they can't, that is fine.  But can they help in another way?  Can you help a family who can and will adopt?  Can you care for their children while they are traveling?  Can you look after their home while they are gone?  Can you help them financially to get there?  The investment in a child's future is worth it!!!  Can you be a strong supporter for them after they get home?  What can you do???

LIFTED

Chris Kyzar, a very dear friend of ours is putting this event together for local families. If you and your family would like to come it will be a great event. They are planning a bonfire, a football game, live music, and a presentation of the gospel from an incredible young man. It will be a great evening to get out and spend quality time with your family. The event is Saturday, November 12th, is 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Admission is completely free. We will be fundraising for our adoption at this event. We will be selling World's Finest Chocolate Covered Almonds for $2 a box.  We will also be selling raffle tickets for an iPad2 for $5.    The drawing will be on December 5.  Another fundraiser we will be doing is raffle tickets for a necklace that was handmade for us.

This beautiful necklace is made of faux pearls and turquoise, real smoky quartz and the tag that says "fisher of men" is hand stamped.  It was hand made by D’Nae Cherry of Celebrations Hand-Stamped Jewelry.  You can check out more of her work on Facebook.  Raffle tickets are $5.00 each.  The drawing will be held on December 15. 

We also have a friend who is making some Christmas ornaments.  If they come in before November 12th we will be selling those as well.  I will post a picture as soon as I have one.

I want to say thank you to everybody who helped us with donations and purchasing tickets for the spaghetti lunch. We cleared roughly about $440 with the cash we collected for that day from donations and ticket sales.  We are that much closer to bringing a girl into our home and giving her a chance to change the course of her future. 

I want to leave you with another great verse that speaks to my heart.  James 1:26-27

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.  Religion that God our Gather accepts as pur and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Challenge yourself this week to think about what you say to and about those around you who might need a word of encouragement instead of words that hurt and degrade.  Be open to the Lord's prompting to help someone in need.  Offer a hand of friendship and the gift of a heartfelt smile to people around you. 

Spaghetti Lunch

One last plea to let me know if you are planning to come to the spaghetti lunch.  We need to put the shopping list together to see how much to buy.  Email me at vltygart@att.net or Facebook me or Lynn Loecher to let us know how many plates you need.  Thank you so much!!!

Clearing things up

I have such great friends!!  I received a phone call tonight from a friend asking me to clear up some information I shared in the October 8 post.  Please be assured that our daughter Alex is doing just fine, she is not the daughter I was referring to when I commented that our daughter died.
Vernon and I have had four children.  All of our children were pretty close in age, Anthony was two years younger than Alex, Mark two years younger than Anthony, and Rebecca was three years younger than Mark.  The day Rebecca was born we were informed that she had Down Syndrome, which had caused her to have a major congenital heart defect.  She had open heart surgery in December of that year at 3.5 months of age.  The surgery was a success and fixed her heart defect.  However, the damage to her pulmonary artery was extensive.  She died five days after surgery, before she had time for her body to adjust to having the heart repaired and start healing. 

We don't always understand what curve balls life will throw at us.  We can't see into the future.  We don't know the number of days we have on this Earth.  I don't know why Rebecca was allowed to graduate from this life into eternity at such a young age.  I really wish I had been given the chance to raise a child blessed with Downs Syndrome.  But I wasn't.  I have been told that the love and joy expressed by children with Down Syndrome is awesome.  I wish my family had never had to experience the grief of adjusting to life without such a beautiful baby girl.  But we did have to deal with it.  All of it made us stronger and taught us more about God's love and mercy than anything had up to that point.

As I mentioned before, after that happened we thought that our family was complete and we would just raise the three children we still had.  We carried on our very normal life for 9 years after Rebecca died without even considering adoption.  But God had different plans.  After adopting Josh we were back up to having four children in our family.  When we complete our current adoption we will have five children.  I love my life and would not have it any other way.  Some days are tough, but the joys far outweigh the struggles. 

My favorite verse of all time is Jeremiah 29:11-13 "For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.  'Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.  'You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."  Vernon and I absolutely must believe that God has plans for us and for our children.  We must call upon the LORD and seek his guidance and direction as we deal with life's difficulties.  Dealing with the death of a child was a tough one.  But God proved himself faithful and carried us through.  Dealing with difficulties at work, with our children, making decisions for our future (and future children) all require us to seek God and rely on Him to tell us what to do to bring about his plans for our future and to show us hope in Him.  People tell me that they just don't know how they would handle some of the things we have had to deal with.  The only answer I have for them is that I can't handle them either.  But I know a God who can handle everything and He loves me and takes care of me when I can't.

I hope this clears up a few things and alleviates some concerns from those who did not know this part of our story.

Where are we now?

I haven't had much time to write this weekend.  I have to help my son prepare for a speech, put an outline together for a school project, and work on some algebra homework this afternoon.  We tried to go out and do some fundraising yesterday but didn't get to do much. I got called in to work for a bit and then had dinner with other couples from the church who have adopted.  All in all, a very busy weekend.

If you are wondering where we are on the adoption now, not much farther than we were the last time I posted.  We are collecting the information we need to finish the home study.  They require a lot of financial documents that take a while to pull together.  We have not received the results of the FBI criminal history check yet, which is required before the home study can be completed. We have filled out our paperwork for United States Immigration Services and are getting it ready to mail this week.  I have my medical exam scheduled for this week and Vernon has his medical exam schedule for the first week in November.  These medical exams are required both for the home study and for the adoption dossier.

So many people ask about how much things cost so I will give you a run down so far.  The home study in Mississippi for international adoptions is about $1400.  We only have to pay half of that this time around since they are classifying our home study as an update instead of doing a whole new one.  The immigration application is $975.  We also need to commit to a translator by making the initial payment of $2000, which needs to be done soon so we can get the official documents from them to start working on.  

For those of you who are planning to attend the spaghetti lunch next Sunday please contact us and let us know.  We have to buy the food this week and right now we don't know how much food to buy.  Lots of people have told us they will be coming but haven't actually purchased their tickets so we don't really even have an estimated head count.  If you could please email us at vltygart@att.net .  Also, I will be generating an adoption update group in my email so that when we are in Ukraine and have specific prayer needs that we can't post publicly on the blog I can send a prayer request to our prayer warriors via email.

Well, off to do homework.  If I had a degree for every time I finished high school I would have 4 and be half way through my 5th.  Just think, I get to start 9th grade all over again when the adoption is complete.  I have to wonder how many college degrees I might have one day!!!  I wonder what degrees I will be helping them get too!!

Why adopt from Ukraine?

Lots of people ask us why we are adopting from Ukraine.  My only solid answer is because that is what God has called us to.  Believe it or not, we never discussed adoption as an option for us until God called us to adopt our son Josh.  We had 4 children biologically, we didn't really need more children.  After our daughter died we really thought that God had planned for us to just have the three children we were raising and the family was complete.  But God had different plans.  Once the decision to adopt had been clarified for us there was a lot of fear in bringing children into a house full of children.  What if they don't get along?  But, God doesn't call the equipped, he equips the called (I don't remember where I heard that but I really do believe it).  We are no different than other parents except that we are willing to take a chance with God.  We know that God will weave all of our lives together to bring His plans into full fruition for all of us.  It is amazing to see how God works in building families.  I cannot imagine what life would be like without Josh.  I don't even want to know.  He has added so much to our lives.  I know that the child (children) that God still has for us to adopt will add so much more to our life. 


A lot of people say that since we live in America we should adopt American children.  There are just as many children from America who want and need homes and families as are in Ukraine.  I don't know the statistics of how many orphans are in each country but I am aware that children in America want a home and family too.  There are lots of children in every country on this great big beautiful planet of ours who want and need homes and families.  I really think that everyone who has a serious  interest in whether or not American children are being adopted should be praying about what God is calling them to do about it.  Not everybody is called to adopt, but everybody can help orphans in some way.  There are organizations who work with orphans and children who have been removed from a less than desirable home environment.  Those children may need mentors or foster parents or adoptive parents.  People who can't devote their time may be able to support another family who can.  So, if God has given you a passion for orphans from any country prayerfully consider what that means.

Fundraisers

When we adopted our son we used our savings account and took out a loan to cover the rest.  This time, we don't have the rainy day fund in our savings that we used then.  Since we have already taken out the one loan we really don't want to take out another.  That is the reason for so many fundraisers.  I want to say THANK YOU!!! to all of those who have helped us so far.  So many people have stepped up and asked how they can help us raise the funds for our adoption.  We have had people we don't even know very well step up and sell chocolates for us, people telling us they want to follow us through the process and to make sure we keep them updated (hence the blog and updates on Facebook).  The love people have for orphans and for us is amazing!!  God is showing himself faithful through his people and I am loving every minute of it.  I believe that nobody lives in a bubble.  Nobody raises their children alone.  We all need people.  It takes a whole community to raise a child.  People at church, teachers at school, adults in the neighborhood all help structure the way a child matures and learns about life.  The friends the kids make at church, at school and in the community all have an influence on the opinions a child develops and the decisions they make as they grow into adults, and even into adulthood.   The most important thing I want for my children is to be in a community full of people who are pointing my children to Christ.  That is what we have here in our community.  I am blessed and I believe that this adoption will bring another child (or two) into or home where she can share in the blessings that God has given to us, our church, our school, and our community in general.

So, how can you help?  First, pray.... pray..... pray!!! If God is not leading this ship I don't want to be on it.   Adoption is not easy for the child being adopted nor is it easy for the family bringing a new child into their home.  It will be difficult for my boys to adjust to having a new sister in the house and it will be hard for her to learn how to relate to the boys as brothers.  There will be huge adjustments that must be made by all of us and we need God to be the center of all of those adjustments.  I can do all things in Christ who gives me strength and peace, but without Him I am nothing and can do nothing.  Please pray for us!!!

Second thing you can do to help, the fundraisers.......We are still selling World's Finest Chocolates and tickets for a spaghetti lunch on the 23rd of October. We are hoping it will be a beautiful Sunday afternoon so everybody can come hang out on the deck at Tim and Lynn Loecher's and have lunch with us. The lunch includes all you can eat spaghetti, garlic toast, salad, pudding and tea for only $7 for an adult and $5 for kids under 10. By the way, I need to borrow some tables to set up for the lunch. If you have some that we can borrow please email me. 

We are selling tickets for an Apple iPad 2 for $5 each.  We will be drawing for the iPad on December 5th.  If you would be interested in purchasing tickets you can see us personally or you can use the donate button here on the blog.  If you use the donate button please send me an email to follow up with me to make sure your name and phone number are placed in the bucket for the drawing.  My email is vltygart@att.net. 

One fundraiser we are sill working on putting together is a Christmas Ornament sale.  I have a friend who makes these ornaments herself.  She is coming up with a one-of-a-kind design just for this adoption.  She has a show coming up soon so she can't work on it yet.  I don't know yet what they are going to look like but I know they will be beautiful.  As of right now I have asked to have the size ornaments that will sell for $10 each.  If I can get a picture from her I will post it here on the blog for you to see.

I hope everybody is having a wonderful Saturday!!  It is absolutely beautiful here. 

Update

We have been really busy so I haven't had much time for updating the blog.  Vernon and I took a much needed weekend away to the beach with some friends.  We had a wonderful time!!  The next weekend we went to see my parents and my brother who is back from Afghanistan.  I am so proud of my family, all of my family.

We haven't made too much progress on the adoption as of date.  We have met with our social worker and started the home study.  Our fingerprints that are required for the home study have been done.  We are making plans for our fundraisers.  Currently we are selling World's Finest Chocolates for $2 each; collecting gold and silver jewelry from people who are interested in donating it to be melted down and have us colect the market value for the gold and silver; and selling tickets for a spaghetti lunch for later this month.  Fundraisers in the works include christmas ornaments (let me know if you might be interested in ordering some christmas ornaments so I will have an idea of how many to order), raffle tickets for a necklace, raffle tickets for an I-Pad, considering a yard sale and maybe a coupon sale on Facebook.  We will be putting a PayPal link on the blog soon to sell these items through this blog.  If you have really good ideas for a fund raiser please send me an email or Facebook message. 

I will hopefully be able to put together another question and answer this weekend.  If you have a question you would like for me to answer please email or Facebook message me and I will answer any reasonable question.

I hope everybody is as blessed as I am and will have a great week filled with joy.  If that is not the week you are having, know that God is good and He can turn any circumstance or situation into good.