I had a chance to listen to Sergey Demidovich at the Summit of the Orphan VI. Sergey is a pastor from the Ukraine and his little translator woman was just about the cutest translator of all time. He was so passionate about his topic that he practically jumped up and down on stage and yelled at the translator in excitement and hoping she'd translate faster. The 2 together were hilarious.
His story is insane. Literally. Get ready. You aren't ready for this testimony.
He and his wife had 2 biological children. One day his wife told him that she felt like God was telling them to go to the hospital and hold orphaned babies and maybe adopt one. He said he did the "spiritual" thing and said, "no i think we should just pray about that." He says often times, when we have no intention of following through with anything we are being convicted about - we give that response... "I'll just pray about it." Eventually, they went together to the local hospital and held a sickly baby boy. Sergey said he felt no compassion for the child. He thought the kid was yucky and diseased and didn't look anything like him. After fulfilling his wife's request, he left the hospital. On the drive home, he says he heard the audible voice of God speaking to him as is speaking through the baby boy. This voice said things like, "why don't you want me? God has adopted you as a son of the most high, why won't you adopt me? Are you just going to leave me here?" and so on and so on. He started crying, was convicted, did a U-turn and went back to the hospital and adopted the baby boy who was rather sick and tiny. The baby cried everyday for months and they didn't know what they could do for him to help him but hold him, feed him and pray for him. They brought him back into the hospital a few months later for a check up and the doctors were shocked. They wanted to know what they had done because this child was not the same baby anymore. He wasn't sick or tiny or diseased anymore. They told the doctors they just prayed and then the doctors wanted to know all about whoever they were praying to. Sergey decided that although this child didn't look like him, this child would be his spiritual child b/c it would have his faith.
It didn't take long before Sergey decided that this adoption was the single greatest thing he'd ever done in his entire life. He started going door to door and telling every single person in his city about adoption and how awesome it is. He told his entire church from the pulpit every week about how awesome adoption is and how it is literally the heart of God. He started making christian inspirational short videos either about successful adoptions or children waiting to be adopted.
At this time, the Ukraine had over 300,000 orphans living in over crowded orphanages. The Ukraine was closed to all international adoptions. It was a crisis.
The government of Ukraine started to see the drastic numbers of children that were being adopted as a result of these short videos. So they started using Sergey's christian videos to encourage people from within their country to adopt orphans. Within 10 years of spreading the word all over the Ukraine to churches across the country there are now less than 30,000 children living in orphanages. That's insane.
That's god.
That's god absolutely moving on behalf of the orphan THROUGH the local church.
I believe that the local church has a HUGE role to play in our world's current orphan crisis. there are over 148 million orphans world wide. America's own back yard has over 140,000 children in waiting in foster care waiting to be adopted. Each year almost 30,000 children AGE OUT of foster care and NEVER get a forever family. They need us. They need the church.
Sergey has now adopted 3 children and was used of God to begin a movement that helped over 270,000 orphans in the Ukraine find forever families.
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