After a series of short term trips to a government-run orphanage in a village in northeastern Ukraine, a small and eager team of a few 20-something-year-old girls decided to move to Ukraine to help the orphans. We were young and crazy enough to quickly jump into where we felt God calling us – starting a non-profit, moving to a country where we didn’t know where we’d live, how to speak the language, or what in the world our plan was other than loving these kids. It was a mission of love to help specific kids we had come to know and love at the Pravdinska Orphanage. We didn’t want them to grow into the statistics of prostitution, prison, unemployment, and suicide. We wanted them to grow, to thrive, and to know God’s love for them. We firmly believed in relationships being a necessary part of helping change their lives. 1 John 3:18 says, ”Let us not love in words or tongue, but in actions and in truth.” We wanted that to be the way we loved them and how they would come to know His Love. And so OAU was born. We moved to Sumy with a lot of naive ideas, without much of a plan, but a huge heart to just love “our” kids.
After about 8 years of living in Sumy in full-time ministry, our team has changed and grown. We now have a team of American and Ukrainian staff and volunteers, more than one of which grew up in the Pravdinska orphanage. We’ve done everything from running camps in the orphanage, to a transition home for teenage orphanage “graduates”, to post-orphanage Grad Camps, to health care, to prison ministry, and a million things in between. Our current focus is War Relief – bringing aid wherever we can to the war-torn country of Ukraine and its strong and brave people.
We have grown and changed a lot over the years, but our ultimate mission has remained the same – to serve the people of Ukraine.