Only 15% of orphans in the region are adopted. About 70% of orphaned children are unadoptable because they still technically have a living parent who is unable to care for them. For the rest who are eligible for adoption, only about half will ultimately find a family.

Eric Mock with SGA says, “So where a lot of people are focusing on adopting these children out, what do you do with the other 85% of these kids?

“Well, what SGA is doing [is] we help the local churches put their loving arms around these children and minister to them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So these children with no hope are finding hope.”

Orphans Reborn in Russia (Photo courtesy of SGA)

Orphans Reborn partners with local churches to walk alongside orphaned and vulnerable children with the love of Christ. That presence becomes critical as children approach adulthood.

Without guidance, Mock says many young people leaving orphanages face devastating outcomes.

“A lot of the young girls end up in prostitution. A lot of the young men end up selling drugs, or they’re in destructive behavior,” Mock says. “So these churches are the ones locally who will not only minister to the kids, but bring them into the family of God, the family of the local church.”

That long-term investment was on display during a recent Christmas outreach in Russia.

An Orphans Reborn coordinator named Olga had spent years visiting an orphanage serving about 45 children. When that orphanage closed, God opened another ministry door at an orphanage for children with special needs. It was the first time believers had ever been allowed on the premises.

More than 130 children attended the Christmas celebration. A puppet theater presented a Christmas message, followed by a brief talk about the birth of Christ. Each child and staff member also received a gift.

Mock says, “To these kids, it’s more than what they get. It’s the fact that they aren’t forgotten, that they get something, and they know that someone is thinking about them. So through Orphans Reborn, they get the gift of family, the gift of the Gospel, the gift of Christmas.”

Orphans Reborn in Russia (Photo courtesy of SGA)

Orphanage administrators expressed gratitude and invited Olga to come back at the end of January!

Across the region, SGA supports ministry to orphaned children in more than 285 orphanages and Christian family homes in seven countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Poland, Kazakhstan, and parts of Central Asia.

“So more than 17,000 children that don’t have the love of a family experience the love of the family of God and the hope of the Gospel,” says Mock. “This opens amazing doors.”

It just costs $60 to reach one orphan with SGA Orphans Reborn for the year. Click here to support Orphans Reborn with SGA.

Header photo: Orphans Reborn in Russia (Photo courtesy of SGA)

The UN says two-thirds of Sudan’s population will need help to survive another year. Children are disproportionately affected, with 55 percent of displaced people being under the age of 18.

Hope remains for Sudan, but not because the government says that 2026 will be a “year of peace.” Instead, a different source offers a more optimistic outlook.

“God is at work in our fallen world,” says a Gospel worker we’ll call John.

“He is not silent, not powerless. He is bringing people to Himself in the worst of times.”

Help for the hopeless

Sudanese church planters and medical teams bring donated medicines to displacement camps in Sudan and South Sudan. More about that here.

“The last bit of medicine that we had in this second shipment went to an orphanage outside of Juba,” John says.

Sudan refugees
(Representative AI photo created by ChatGPT)

More than 900 children call the facility home, and “this orphanage encapsulates what’s happening everywhere we go,” John says.

“About 15 percent of the children are suffering from what they call night blindness, and it is caused most times by an extreme deficiency of vitamin A,” he continues.

“The children were covered with sores and lesions from malnutrition and poor hygiene.”

“Critical edge of death”

Famine is widespread in Sudan as a result of the war. Children at the orphanage only get “one meal a day, and it is a small thing of beans and cornmeal. Because they’re not getting iron, there is a large, large percentage with anemia,” John says.

You can help by supporting Sudanese church planters through John’s organization.

“We’ve decided to do a four-month effort and then see what God does. So, we’re going to provide meat for those 907 children every week, and multiple vitamins for each one of them,” John says.

“We’re purchasing some of the protein meals that the UN uses to get these children under five away from that critical edge of death.”

As the children received medical care through the latest outreach, they heard about a God who loves them. Pray that these Gospel seeds will take root.

“Anyone who gets involved with the suffering of displaced people in the world is up for a great blessing,” John says.

Header and story images are representative AI photos generated by ChatGPT. 

“The main thing we do at Set Free is freedom appointments and helping people to find their freedom in Christ. We do that all over the world in a variety of settings,” Set Free’s Jason Taylor says.

Despair is readily apparent in a place like India. Millions of discarded kids fill orphanages to overflow, while petty crime and corruption crowd prison cells.

An army of volunteers, trained by Set Free, is helping people in both settings leave despair behind. Learn more here.

With more than half of India’s population living in poverty, many parents abandon their children instead of attempting to care for them, according to the International Learning Movement (ILM).
(Photo courtesy of Yash Sharma/Pexels)

“A big part of what we’re doing is training both church leaders and lay leaders to lead others through a freedom appointment,” Taylor says.

“We are taking the Steps to Freedom model and replicating that in as many languages as possible so that people can have it in their own language.”

A recent trip brought Taylor and his team face-to-face with some of the children helped by Set Free partners. The team’s arrival proved timely.

“Just before we got there, we heard that the well for this orphanage had literally gone dry,” Taylor says.

“We were able to help fund the redrilling of that well so the 1,300 kids could have clean water.”

Open doors

Meanwhile, another Gospel opportunity lies just across the border in Myanmar, home to the world’s longest-running civil war. Nearly 75 years of conflict between the government and armed ethnic groups have ingrained trauma into the national psyche.

After traveling to India, Taylor and others met with Free Burma Rangers in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to discuss a possible partnership. Watch a free documentary about the work of Free Burma Rangers here.

“They are going in and freeing the oppressed physically, so that they can ultimately be set free spiritually, but we have to get [people] to a safe place first before that scan actually take place,” Taylor explains.

Pray for discernment as believers in both groups seek God’s will. Pray that hurting souls will find freedom in Christ.

Pray also for a new opportunity in Pakistan. “There is a ministry there called The Lord’s Home; we’re looking to meet with their executive director in the coming weeks, and possibly take a trip there in early 2026,” Taylor says.

Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Kuntal Biswas/Pexels.

Eric Mock with Slavic Gospel Association says many orphan children have seen extreme domestic violence or substance abuse from their parents. Some have even been abused themselves. Things don’t get easier from that point. 

“Then they’re placed in orphanages where many, many kids have a single teacher or caregiver. They’re often not invested in like a loving parent would invest in them, to show them a different way of life,” Mock says. 

Summer camp for kids. (Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association)

Kids come to SGA-partner-led summer camps with little concept for what a loving and merciful heavenly Father is like. 

“The idea that He would sacrifice His Son in atonement for their sins and their choices is hard to process,” Mock says. 

But these wonderful truths about God begin to open up to children when they experience summer camp.

“When they see the men and women of the local church being the arms and legs of of Christ, as it were, showing them the love and the joy and the patience that they have never seen in their life, they see a new image, a new picture,” Mock says. 

“In the case of war-torn areas like in Ukraine, kids that have only known stress are shown a picture of peace. Not only verbally do we talk of peace, but they’re surrounded by that peace. They’re surrounded by people with joy, who comfort them and care for them, love them.” 

For just $41, you can sponsor a child to hear the good news of Jesus. Learn more about SGA’s mission with local churches to reach 77,000 children across 13 countries this summer and how you can sponsor children to go to camp.

“There are far too many orphans who do not believe in Christ and continue in the footsteps of their parents, who are often destitute or previously orphans themselves,” Mock says. 

“Through these camps, we pray that many more will respond.” 

Header photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association.

One single woman named Vivian joined a Syrian dating app to find a husband. She met and married a man who beat and abused her after they were wed. Although she didn’t know God, she cried out to Him and was able to escape from her husband.

Soon afterward she discovered she was pregnant. Vivian was homeless and jobless. She didn’t think she had any option but to abort her baby. But God had other plans and she kept her daughter.

A “Chance” Meeting with Uncharted Ministries

The Uncharted Ministries team in Syria met Vivian while they were sharing food with the poor, orphans, and widows.

Tom Doyle with Uncharted Ministries says, “She had one small little container of yogurt. They had so little. Her daughter could only just dip her finger in there and lick it once a day. They had a little bit of watermelon, occasionally some bread, and that was it.”

Through the ministry of that team, God brought her to faith in Himself. Now despite what she endured, Vivian radiates the joy of the Lord.

(Image courtesy of JodyHongFilms on Unsplash)

Doyle shares, “You talk about a 180 in Christ and just a passion she has to serve others. Now she’s come to faith in Christ. She’s serving [as a] volunteer, got a little job. That’s a miracle in Syria, where she’s able to feed her daughter and herself. The blessings that God has poured out from heaven in Christ to her are really astounding when you think about where she was and where she is today.”

Given Much, Giving Back

Like the widow in Mark 12, Vivian understands both poverty and the value of giving. She received much from God and so now she joyfully gives it back.

“Whether it is money – her little money that she receives in her job – or the food that she gets, she always gives 10% away to others. Whether she buys it or it’s given to her – funds or food – she always gives away 10%. [She] prays, ‘Lord, who do I give this to?’ And He directs her. She’s just the testimony of God blessing us [and] how we’re supposed to pass on the blessing to others.”

Doyle encourages believers to go to the Uncharted Ministries website to learn more about how they can get involved with widows and orphans in Syria. “One of the major ministries we have with Uncharted is helping widows and orphans. We believe every ministry is called to do that, whether that’s in your sphere of what you do — we’ve got to help them. That’s something specifically in Scripture that God tells us to do. And there are so many in Syria.”

Visit the Uncharted Ministries website here to get involved with their ministry.

(Header Image courtesy of Rostyslav Savchyn on Unsplash)

Marcia Baugh heads up The Way Home, a missionary project of Every Child Ministries. She says, “The children end up coming into their homes, and they have no idea where their own next meal is coming from.”

(Photo courtesy of The Way Home, a missionary project of Every Child Ministries)

Marcia and her late husband, Russ, started The Way Home with ECM in 2010 after living in Uganda and seeing how these widowed ‘grannies’ are the pillars of their families. Yet, they need support!

“We build them a stable brick home and kind of stabilize their family, and then teach them Farming God’s Way which is the Gospel in farming,” says Marcia. “They will get like up to ten times the harvest that they would get with their traditional farming. So that becomes a currency for them to pay for school fees or they can sell it in order to do what they need to do to maintain their household.”

The Way Home gets connected with grannies by way of pastor referral. The ministry works with local pastors in Uganda to identify those grannies raising grandchildren in poverty who need assistance.

Marcia says, “We also started a vocational training school for the grannies’ [grand]children…last year, and that teaches them house building, hair braiding, sewing, and carpentry work. So they’re getting an education that they can use to support their family.”

It’s all within the context of Scriptural principles and biblical discipleship. Even after a widowed granny and her family have completed the program, The Way Home and local pastors stay connected with her and continue to share the Gospel.

(Photo courtesy of The Way Home, a missionary project of Every Child Ministries)

Sometimes, it’s the first opportunity grannies and their families have heard about Jesus Christ.

“We continue to teach the Bible to them, and our ultimate goal is that they come to know the Lord and they find their eternal home in Heaven,” says Marcia.

Giving to support grannies in Uganda with ECM makes an eternal difference!

Click here to donate to The Way Home.

Then, pray. Marcia asks, “My constant prayer for me as I lead this ministry is for wisdom and discernment in directing the ministry without my husband. God has answered that prayer in big ways.

“And I would say for my staff in Uganda, the biggest prayer need is for us to go in the direction that God has for us — that we don’t jump out ahead of Him in going down the trail that we think we should be on, [but] that we would follow the Lord and His desires.”

Header photo courtesy of The Way Home.

SGA-supported churches are ministering to an estimated 14,000 orphans in 190 orphanages across six countries, including Ukraine.

Yet, in the midst of wartime, Ukrainian churches have discovered as many as 50,000 “social orphans” who are neglected in their own homes.

SGA’s Eric Mock says, “We miss the children that remain in these homes among parents that are basically abandoning the children every day. We hear of children that come home from school to find parents passed out, they’re drunk, they’re not providing food — children that are going for days at a time with never getting a meal [and] no clean drinking water.

(Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association)

“We’re finding over and over where, especially in Ukraine in the midst of this war, we have single moms that can’t figure out how to survive. The husband is gone or he’s fighting on the front line. Most of the aid centers are single women taking care of children. Some of the men just literally disappeared.”

Some of these social orphans are older siblings responsible for the younger ones, and many even end up on the street — a prospect made more dangerous by the bombs and missiles that have become a reality for Ukrainians.

Then there are Ukrainian orphans who “age out” of the orphanage system. “Children, when they turn at age 17, they leave the orphanage there. They’re nonetheless an orphan, and these children don’t know how to buy groceries. They don’t know how to cook a dinner. They don’t know how to wash their clothes. They don’t know how to pay bills.”

Ukrainian believers are expanding their reach to help these social orphans in their communities with the support of SGA.

Mock says, “We’re not only helping orphans in orphanages, but we’re also working with churches as they minister to children wherever they find them. It might be on the street. It may be in troubled homes.

Summer camp for kids. (Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association)

“Some of the churches are working with families to make sure the tide of orphans heading into orphanages is slowed at least in some measure…. If we sit back and wait somehow for those children to show up in an institution, I think we’re missing an opportunity.”

In reaching social orphans, Ukrainian believers are practicing James 1:27 and representing Jesus Christ to these kids.

You can support SGA’s ministry to orphans in Ukraine here.

Then, pray for Ukrainian orphans to know the perfect love of their Heavenly Father.

Mock says, “Rather than just thinking of orphans in institutions, let us think of broken homes, let’s think older orphans, and what you see is God raising up His Church in these communities to be salt and light among these hurting hearts.”

Header photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association.

Eric Mock says that’s largely due to the pandemic: “Maybe a parent’s been lost due to the pandemic. Parents have lost jobs due to the pandemic, as a whole range of complications have affected these kids. In fact, some of the kids that are in orphanages have actually said they are the lucky ones since they got into the orphanage. Because a lot of the kids that are in these homes suffer incredibly.”

Mock calls these kids “social orphans.” Many live in single-parent homes, typically with the mother. But even the parents these kids do have may not care for them well, due to alcoholism or drug use.

The love of the local churches

The government has no support for these kids, so local churches often provide the only help. You can help this work by supporting SGA’s Orphans Reborn program.

Mock says, “I was just in Ukraine in the war zone. One thing that I noticed was the women. It was these widows or single moms raising children, who are in this arduous journey of providing when the man’s
not around.”

Ask God to strengthen and comfort these women. And pray these families will find hope in Jesus as the local churches care for them.

Life won’t return to normal in these areas any time soon. COVID-19 case numbers remain high in many parts of the former Soviet Union.

Mock says, “Be praying for the churches as they also are at risk. But they seem to labor with no fear. They know the pandemic is there. They know that COVID-19 could take their lives. But much like in the
years of communism, and the threat against them advancing the Gospel, they see it as just one more enemy that they have to fight.”

Photo courtesy of Slavic Gospel Association.

Set Free Ministries’ Dave McIntyre says their partners celebrate 20 years of Gospel work this year, and the future looks bright.

“The government of India [makes] it very difficult for NGOs outside the country to work with people inside the country. Fortunately, Set Free India is almost 100 percent self-supporting,” McIntyre says.

“They are the poster child of sustainable ministry.”

Set Free India is headquartered in Mizoram state near the Myanmar border, a region quite distinct from the rest of India. “When you think of India, you think of Hindus and Muslims. Mizoram is 98 percent Christian,” McIntyre says.

“The hill people there were headhunters [that] converted to Christianity.”

Many in Mizoram claim to know Jesus, but their lives show a different truth. “A lot of people there are Christian in name only,” McIntyre says.

“They are Christians because their grandparents went to church, and [they] grew up going to church. They haven’t connected with their faith, so their prison population is maxed out.”

Set Free India disciples the downtrodden, teaching them what it means to have a relationship with Christ. More about that here. Pray for Gospel growth as believers reach out to addicts, prisoners, and orphans.

“I was there for two weeks and spoke in six different churches; most men would put their heads down and go to sleep. It was indicative of the state of the Church there in Mizoram,” McIntyre says.

“In total contrast, when you talk to the addicts and convicts, they are listening and eager to hear the Word of God.”

Header image courtesy of Set Free Ministries.

Christian World Outreach helps orphaned kids and their caretakers with an interesting means of support — goats!

(Photo courtesy of Christian World Outreach)

CWO’s Greg Yoder says, “We don’t have an orphanage per se. We try to find what we would call here in the States ‘foster families.’ A lot of times that’s grandparents and uncles and aunts that bring the kids in.

“[Goats] help them raise some money because they’ve brought another child into the house that they didn’t have before and helps them raise money so they can feed them. We continue to help pay for school fees and food and clothing and things like that.”

What difference do goats make for Zimbabwe families? Yoder explains, “If we can get them a pair of goats, they can get the milk but they can also have baby goats to raise some money for the family.”

CWO has given goats to 60 households so far. The ministry hopes to fund 100 more goats in the next two months for Zimbabwe families.

You can help! Each goat costs just $70. It’s a minor investment with a critical impact.

Help the ministry reach its goal and give here to the Goat Project under CWO’s Zimbabwe fund!

Yoder says it’s all done in Jesus’ name. “Pray that this will expand to give us opportunities to share the Gospel. That’s why we help with the physical needs is it opens the door to share the Gospel with people.”

Header photo courtesy of Jonathan Mast via Unsplash.