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History
The story of God working in the hearts of a few of His
people to develop the ministry of Jeremiah’s Hope goes back to 1996. It was in
this year that Andrew Kelly went on a mission trip to share Jesus in camps in
Ukraine with World Wide Youth Camps (WWYC). One of the camps in which WWYC was
working is a camp called Emerald City that exists to serve orphans from around
the Donetsk region. At this time, a married couple working with WWYC started
the process of adopting two of the girls they had met at the Emerald City camp.
These girls lived in the orphanage in Mariupol, Ukraine, the main port city of
the Donetsk region. This couple made several trips to the orphanage in Mariupol
throughout the process of adopting the two girls. Andrew made many of these
trips with them, getting to know many of the children at the orphanage
personally.
In 1997 Steve Taliaferro began working full-time with WWYC and made his first
trip to Ukraine. It wasn’t until Christmas of 1999 that Steve made his next
trip to Ukraine. Andrew had told Steve that he was going to visit the children
at the orphanage in Mariupol and
Steve asked to go along. After being moved by his time with the orphans on this
trip, Steve began to make several trips per year to visit the orphanage in
Mariupol and began getting to know children in orphanages in other cities in the
region as well.
Through developing relationships with the children in these orphanages, Andrew
and Steve began to learn of the plight of these children once they have to leave
the orphanages in their late teens. It was then that God began putting on their
hearts a desire to do
something to help and share the hope of Jesus with these children. God was also
moving in the hearts of several of the local Christians who had worked with
Andrew and Steve through WWYC and in their visits to the orphanages. Several of
these people now also serve either on the staff of Jeremiah’s Hope or in
volunteer roles.
At the end of 2002 Steve moved to Donetsk, Ukraine with the purpose of
establishing ministry to orphans in the region, specifically orphanage
graduates. In July of 2004, Jeremiah’s Hope became an officially registered
Ukrainian organization. A Ukrainian Board of Directors was established and
local Christians were hired to join the staff. August of 2004 saw Andrew
moving to Ukraine as well as the
opening of our first transitional living center for orphanage
graduates in Mariupol, Ukraine.
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