Changes

As some of you may know, our parents at the boys group home, Andrey and Ira have moved on and Garry and Victor hired a new gentleman from Eastern Ukraine to live at the "boys house" just before Garry flew back in December. Yesterday they got everything moved around,  Vova is going to start  living right in one of the bedrooms with  Kolya, our oldest student, in order to get to know the boys faster. Added advantage- the new side of the house is warmer. The parents' side is the original house the addition was built onto, and so there is better insulation in the new part.

 Andrey, Ira and their daughter moved into a house they had bought in village two years ago, where he has built a small greenhouse. She has been working with New Hope Center in Zap. Garry told me he had a good talk with them and everyone was happy with the change.

All our group home parents are like missionaries, Ukrainian Christians living with mostly non-Christian adult orphans aged 18-23. Being a group home parent is a tough job, so it's not surprising that some of them get "burnt out" with the stress.

They have a place to live but really just a part time salary for living with and teaching the students some life skills at home and teaching two hours of classroom time every other week, so we encourage them to find a part time job. Really what we want is a family atmosphere, but they aren't your children. We don't have a lot of rules but we ask that they try to eat together family and students at least once a day, to build community and life skills for the students who have grown up in a more industrial group setting.