Egor's Journey
Please pray for Egor
Egor is 14. I rescued him from the village near where I started a mercy ministry in the Tuberculosis (open infection) Hospital a number of years ago. The hospital - with indescribable conditions - is where male convicts are shipped who contract TB in the prisons. It is situated next to a bog and a graveyard, and most of the men end up in that graveyard. Russia has developed a new strain of infectious TB that is very difficult to cure because Soviet economizing meant that the necessary protocol for TB drugs was not properly administered due to funding deficits. I started working in the hospital with a Ukrainian pastor. I will never forget the incredible anointing that fell while I preached in that horrible place - one time they hauled out a corpse right in the middle of my preaching - but they all look like walking corpses, really. Many men came to know Jesus; some were supernaturally and completely healed of TB: One who had two holes larger than an inch in diameter in his lungs was pronounced totally healed by the Doctors. His comment was, "Why would God want to heal me, He knows what a sinner I am?" Another man had ten such holes on his lungs healed! When they are well, these men come to our church in Kharkov. My partner, Egor Kuraxin, the director of our Poor Ministry takes over pastoral care for them then. We provide a meal and so there are men walking with the Lord now who have been rehabilitated and reintroduced back into society as productive citizens.
After preaching at this hospital, the Lord led me to start a work in the nearby village itself. Alcoholism, witchcraft, violence, and adultery are the norm there; I was told that in the whole village only two males were not alcoholics. It is so cold and there isn't work, so the men have no gainful occupation and no hope. I started a home group. As the cockroaches scampered up the black, mold-covered walls, these dear people heard the Gospel for the first time. It was there that I became acquainted with little Egor, when he was 11. Egor's mother is a derelict drunk and had neglected and abused him. Her apartment makes the concentration camps look like a palace. His godmother met Jesus while I was there, and so did her husband: He suffered horribly with sclerosis of the liver for a few years and we buried him at 33, but he went home to be with the Lord. I got to know Egor better when we started reaching out to the children of these alcoholics, taking them into the big city, Kharkov, for a field trip. Although Kharkov is only 22 kilometers away most of these extremely poor kids had never seen it. We went to the zoo, and then the surprise: McDonalds (They didn't even know what that was)! It turned out the day of the field trip was the day after Egor's 12th birthday. The MacDonald's Happy Meal gave him his first real toy.
That summer, I was given permission to bring Egor home with me, to stay for a while. We fell in love with him while he was with us and have been taking care of him for the last two years. We are working toward adopting him but my move to America with Sarah has complicated matters. The Ukrainian Government has officially shut down all international adoptions at present. He is staying with his godmother back in the village.
Please pray that we may adopt Egor before he turns 16, and that the law changes soon to make this possible.
Thank you, Joanie
