“We Need to Become Fathers to the Fatherless!”
“What do you think is the biggest problem these days?” a pastor I know asked me as we sat down to chat.
“Fatherlessness,” I replied.
“True,” he said. And after a moment of silence, he continued, “I guess we’ll just have to become fathers to the fatherless.”
Those words were a revelation for me. That was in 2003. Exactly one year later, being a father to the fatherless became a reality for me.
Andrey and Natasha have served as parents for street children for 20 years.
In 2004, I met Ignat Ivanov, Mission Possible’s director, in Yekaterinburg. My wife and I spoke with him for four hours. We talked about the street children we saw in our city. He said that Mission Possible had been working with street children in many cities for many years. “If you have these children in your heart, go and help them,” he concluded.
January will mark 20 years since we began helping street children and working together with Mission Possible.
Through the years, we have had thousands of divine appointments on the streets, in filthy basements, and inside tunnels with these neglected children. We have encountered exploited youth, pregnant girls, and newborn babies. We’ve taken ones to hospitals and have attended funerals.
Shelter home and foster children
For years, we operated a day center to share the gospel and feed street children. Then we built a shelter home for them, and to this day, my wife and I have sheltered more than 650 children.
With so many sons and daughters, we have had the great blessing to rejoice with them over school graduations, baptisms, weddings, first steps in ministry, motherhood, and fatherhood!
Once a hooligan…
I remember when we were asked to take in Dima, a 15-year-old boy – in short, a hoodlum – for six months. It was a rough six months.
Another “temporary” six months followed, and it was peppered with bike and car thefts, assaults, and heavy drinking. This translated to many humiliating situations for me as I sorted out all Dima’s trouble.
Finally, the difficult year with Dima came to an end. We had to decide whether to keep him or put him in an orphanage. I couldn’t give him up. God never gives up on us…
“We’ll keep Dima,” I said one morning to our team members, who were as exhausted as I was. There was a disappointed sigh. The shelter home children were listening behind the door and ran to tell Dima what had been decided about his fate. Upon hearing the “verdict,” the defiant teenager burst into tears.
From then on he was a completely different boy: a hooligan-turned-kitten! He became the first to help when needed and would hug me, or just lean on my shoulder until it went numb (he was bigger than me!)
Fatherhood is God-ordained
To have a loving father is the dream of many children. The essence of fatherhood is in God, demonstrated in His perfect love for us. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” said Jesus, the Son of God.
We keep in touch with Dima, who has now become a father himself!
“I just turned 55. I have three of my own children and 23 official foster children, yet even more than that sent me a card that read, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!’”
Andrey, fulfilling the role of a father, has walked many girls from the shelter home down the aisle. Andrey’s wife, Natasha is the shelter home’s mother (pictured on the left).
“What is the secret to being a good father?”
“Intercessory prayer! And I think when we see that there are no unlovable children in God’s eyes, we gain the ability to love and accept everyone and to believe in the possibilities of God in their lives.”
