An Interview with Pastor Petr Dudnik
The previous issue of the East-West Church Report (vol. 27, no. 2) featured an interview with Pastor Petr Dudnik, leader of Good News Pentecostal Church in Sloviansk [Russian: Slaviansk]. This city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Region was held by pro-Russian rebels for three months in 2014, before reverting to Ukrainian government control. The front line is still only around 50 miles away.
In the previously published portion of the interview, Pastor Dudnik spoke at length about the impact of the armed conflict in Ukraine upon his church community, as well as members’ efforts to offer a Christian response. In the portion published here, he outlines a key area of Good News Church’s work that continues despite the conflict: support for orphans and children from troubled families
The editor of the East-West Church Report met Pastor Dudnik at Good News Church in Sloviansk in October 2018. The conversation took place in Russian.
How did your orphanage, Sails of Hope, come about?
In the late 1990s there were very many street kids in our country. We simply started to feed street kids; we also clothed them and prayed with them. But it was a dead-end project, because at 6 pm we went home, while they returned to their sewers. This was painful, but we did not understand what God wanted from us, although we understood that He was pushing us towards this work. Then, one rainy autumn day, four children who were living under street kiosks asked if they could stay at the church after we had fed them. They slept on our dining tables. That is how our Sails of Hope Orphanage began. This was a very difficult economic time in Ukraine—there was very high unemployment and salaries were extremely poor for people who were still working—but God prepared us for more. We began the orphanage with around 50 children. It was extremely difficult, I repeat, because we also needed extensive expertise and documentation.
For three or four years we were fully responsible for these children. We took care of them, working alongside psychologists. But when the older children began to leave the orphanage aged 17 or 18, we found that a portion of them returned to their previous lifestyle. This was a shock for us. We could not believe how, after such an investment of time and effort and prayer and finances, we saw such a result. We did not set up our orphanage in the manner of a state institution; church members were deeply involved in this ministry. For instance, we encouraged church members to take the children with them on vacation, and we improved the orphanage building during that time ourselves, using either church funds or donations.
Then, 16 years ago, I received a revelation from God. During a worship service, God said to me that if we gave birth to another child, that child would save thousands. I do not use the words “God said to me” lightly; it has happened only a few times in my life that I knew for certain God was telling me something. We already had two children then, and I thought, “Wow, this is something special.” I thought someone would be born with a high calling; a great preacher. My wife became pregnant, but in the fifth month she had a miscarriage. This was a shock for us, and I thought at that moment that God had deceived me. Then, when she was in hospital due to associated complications, the story continued. There was a woman in the ward with her who had had an abortion, and another who was preparing to have one. Ukrainian law allowed abortions at any time due to so-called “social indicators”: for instance, if you already had three or more children, or could not support a child. When my wife talked with the woman who was about to have an abortion, she explained that her life was poor. My wife told her that this was because she broke spiritual laws; she said whatever she could to try to preserve this life. But this woman was resolved to have the abortion. She underwent an abortion procedure in which an injection induces labor. Contractions suddenly started, and she began to give birth in the ward. Everyone else ran out, but my wife stayed and saw that a girl was born and started to move. Later on the head of the hospital—who was of retirement age—said to my wife that this was the only time she had ever seen a child remain alive after an abortion.
At this time I was travelling out of the country. I got a call at the border from my wife, who suggested that we adopt this baby girl. I could not say no at that moment. I told her to prepare the necessary documentation, and that we would make a decision after I got back. Three weeks later we went to meet the mother and collect the girl. The mother looked at my wife and said that she had decided she wanted to keep the baby. Then I began to understand what God had told me in the beginning. That was the first girl we saved. She returned to her mother, who asked us to introduce her to God and the church.
A few weeks later we were told about a mother who kept having children and abandoning them; she had just had another baby. If we were interested, we could go and see. And that is how Ramina appeared in our family—she is now 15. When a pastor adopts a child, he usually talks about what is in his heart. I began to go into this subject when I preached in church, and that began to inspire people to take the next step. I am not familiar with the culture in England, but I know that in American culture adoption is a perfectly ordinary subject. It is common and considered normal. Here in Ukraine, there was a completely different culture. We had the Soviet mindset that children in orphanages are the state’s children, and that the state should take care of them. We thought the maximum the church could do was to give gifts. But to take responsibility, to take these children into our families—that ran against our culture.
When discussion started about this, however, people began to accept the idea and to adopt children. Then God led us to the next stage: We should not just adopt children ourselves; we should change the mindset of the nation about adoption. Today, 15 years later, the most radical changes have taken place in our country. Adoption has become part of national culture. I am not opposed to foreigners adopting our children, but first and foremost we are inspiring our own people to take in those who have been abandoned. I now see that the salvation of children—what God said prophetically about giving birth—was in essence a revelation about adoption; that it would save thousands. This has shaped our relationship with God, the theology of our church, and our theology of life in general. I believe in spiritual laws, one being that if you are trusted in something small, God will entrust you with something greater. I certainly understood that God was preparing us for something greater. We adopted all the children in our orphanage. Together, our church and its five daughter congregations in this city have adopted around 130 children.
Then—around 10 years ago—we considered closing our orphanage due to its financial complexity. But God led us to the next stage. He drew our attention to certain texts in the Bible: the last chapter in the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, where it says He will “turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of children to their parents” [Malachi 4:6], and that this would somehow happen in the spirit of Elijah. To us this sounded like a new direction towards the restoration of families. Today, there are very many so-called “difficult life circumstances”—families in a critical situation, where, for instance, the mother is a drug addict and unemployed, and so the children go hungry. We began to take such children into our orphanage, and we now have 32. We work around the clock with them five days a week, and in parallel we work with their parents. Our aim is to restore the family, to make the situation there safe for the child to return.
These are all families in the city and district of Sloviansk. The children are all with us at the request of their parents. This work is much harder than with a regular orphanage, because there you are responsible only for the children, whereas here responsibility also arises for the parents. For instance, the mother might be on a drug rehabilitation program with us or at some other center. But the greatest reward is when the child returns to the family. It is a joy to see. I don’t recall the statistics for the last few years, but in 2013 we returned 18 children to their families.
If it is not possible to restore the family for some reason—if the child receives the status of orphan or is without parental support—then we find a family to adopt the child. In this way the next child appeared in my own family—that was Nastya, from our Sails of Hope Orphanage. Then came Dima, who was six; then Sergei, who was 17 already, also from our orphanage; and then Pavel and Rima. We took in the last two girls, Sasha and Anya, aged seven and eight, in August [2018]. So we are starting first grade in our 50s! We already have three children who are married, and I am a grandfather twice over!
I recount this in detail because God prepared us for subsequent challenges through these particular spiritual stages. I certainly understand that we are in a process through which God is preparing greater challenges, and how the church should and can respond. That is, we hold in our theology that the church is responsible for the events taking place not only within its walls, but also outside.
Our church professes Pentecostal doctrine, and is open to innovations in serving people in different spheres. A great deal is oriented on the practical expression of our Gospel. We believe that you cannot love God simply for yourself; that God is for me—He saved me, He healed me, He helped me, and I am joyful about life because of that. Christ said that we are a reflection of His light; as He is, so we are. And so we orient people and we ourselves live in order to apply the Gospel in practice in life. It is our responsibility to go wherever there is pain in order to change the situation.
We did that with children, our own families, our city, and to influence the whole country. We are involved in an alliance called Ukraine Without Orphans—we are not some mega exception, there are also many others who are working in this area; other churches in other cities. This topic is nondenominational, one in which everyone can participate. There is also a movement called Russia Without Orphans, and today we have reached the level of World Without Orphans. A team of Ukrainian former orphans recently completed an aroundthe-world bike tour with family and friends promoting the idea of adoption. Starting in 2011, they crossed Europe and Asia—including the whole of Russia from the western border to the Far East—before finishing the California-to-Florida leg in July [2018]. So we have even crossed the whole of America with this message!
Sails of Hope Orphanage is housed in a former kindergarten building on the outskirts of Sloviansk. Since 2000 it has cared for approximately 300 children aged between three and 15. The children spend weekends with their families, but live at the orphanage on weekdays. This is “so that the parents can get on their feet, find work, take care of themselves,” Olga, the children’s nurse, explained to the East-West Church Report. “Then, when they are back on their feet, they can take the children back into the family.” The children are provided with meals, clothing, school supplies, medical care, and psychological support. The orphanage offers kindergarten activities for the youngest, while those of school age attend local schools.
From mid-April to July 2014 an intense battle between Ukrainian and pro-Russian forces sought control of nearby Karachun Hill, the site of a strategic television tower. Sails of Hope orphanage is among the nearest structures to the tower and was badly damaged in the bombing. (At the orphanage, photos of the devastation are accompanied by a quotation in Russian, attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.”) The children had earlier been evacuated to the Kyiv area, but staff feared their building in Sloviansk would be impossible to restore. Yet volunteers from all over Ukraine—as well as the Czech Republic, Poland, the UK, and the US—traveled to rebuild the orphanage. The children were able to return by the end of August 2014. “Now we have such beauty!” Elena, the orphanage’s laundress, remarked to the East-West Church Report.
