Rehab Wraps Up Another Year

Another year of rehab has come to an end as our team is leaving on Friday for camps.  In May, we celebrated the 9th anniversary of our rehab center.  It was a cool, cloudy day so several invited guests chose to stay home, but we were thankful that God answered our prayers and held off the strong rains until the moment we began cleaning up. 

Enjoying some volleyball

Spectators

Vadim cooked the shish kabobs

Rehab continued to be busy throughout the spring and summer.  We are thankful for how God uses this center in the lives of people with disabilities and their families. 

 

Each of the adults pictured below is planning to come to camp.  Would you join us in praying for their salvation? Some of them have cognitive deficits that can hinder their comprehension - please pray that God will grant them the ability to grasp something of Who He is and of their need for a Savior.  Many of them will have family members with them at camp for whom we also pray for salvation.

Tamara

Andri and his wife, Oksana (not pictured)



Viktor

Vitaly

Oleksander

 

Pasha (pictured below) is joining our rehab team full-time in September.  He received his physical therapy degree in Poland last year and has been a part-time volunteer at our center for about 6 months.  We are so grateful that God is answering our prayer to bring a qualified, male therapist to our center and we look forward to having him! 

 Here are a couple of our new faces:

 

 

Matthew is a sweet and very active boy with challenges in several spheres, including walking, speech, and coordination.  He smiles often and claps when he thinks he has done something well and has already begun to show progress with rehabilitation. 

David lives in the village and was working with his family when his left arm got caught in a machine, resulting in fractures and significant damage to muscles and nerves.  He was released to begin therapy only a couple of weeks before rehab closed, so he had an intense program.  Please pray for maximum recovery of his arm function and for David and his family, who are believers, as they continue to trust the Lord and to testify of His goodness in their lives.

 

During the final week of rehab, we were blessed to be joined by Nastya, a speech therapist.  Her family immigrated to America from Ukraine when she was a child and she is actually a native of our region.  She learned about our center and wrote to volunteer her time while she is visiting family and friends this summer.  Many of our patients have speech/language and cognition challenges and we are not qualified to address these areas, but want to offer them any assistance possible.  So we were super excited to have someone who is not only well-trained in this sphere, but who also knows Ukrainian and Russian in addition to English. Nastya was able to have individual consultations with many of our patients while one of our therapists listened and took notes.  Then we had a question/answer time with our therapists and she was able to give us some guidelines to use with our adults with strokes.  We look forward to how God will use our relationship with Nastya more in the future and we are grateful she followed God's leading to volunteer her time with us.

 

 

 

It's hard to believe it's July and time for camps already! Here is what we have going on for the rest of the summer and a some ways you can be praying. 

 

- July 10-16: camp for adults with disabilities.

 

- July 20-25: camp for families with children with disabilities. 

 

For both camps, please pray for the leaders, speakers, and volunteers as we serve people with disabilities and their families and as we share the truth of the Gospel with them. Please also pray for cool weather as we will be at a new campground this year which has very little shade. 

 

- August 15-19: Team begins working at Agape.  We are praying for God's direction for our leaders as they continue to assemble this team. 

 

- August 22-26: Training for new workers at Agape. Several of our friends with disabilities will live at Agape for a week so the staff can learn how to care for them properly.

 

- August 22-September 2: First session of the PT Training Center.  Currently we have 7 students: 3 from our ministry and 2 groups of 2 from other cities. Please pray for these students to prepare well by studying the material they were previously sent and for our final preparation of the schedule, teaching material, etc.

 

- September 5: Rehabilitation begins in Agape.

 

I hope you are all having a blessed summer!

 

Thank you for all who stand with us in prayer!