As a child, everything was more challenging. I wasn’t physically challenged, in comparison with the orphans I’ve worked with in southern Ukraine, but physically, I was “different.” A little girl of 5 or 7 is supposed to have hair. Being in school was such a joy in comparison with the cancer treatments and chemo for the leukemia that riddled my body, but many days it was hard because of the mocking smiles and laughs from those I hoped to be friends.

My parents prayerfully hoped that I would live to understand and have hope in Christ alone. That day came when I was in 6th grade. I’d invited a friend from school to a concert which was significant because I had attended one similar before and our family had the record from that first concert. I was small and frail at that time, but my dad helped me get the signatures of every one of the performers. I listened to that record over and over again. That along with the Gaither’s children’s record were favorites of mine and spoke to my heart. When I went forward that evening, I understood that I needed Jesus as my Savior, but it wasn’t until my sophomore year in college that I finally gained an understanding of what it really meant to be a Christian.

I had just made the drive from upstate NY to Milligan College, TN where I was studying Art and Bible. As I walked into the dorm, I could see that the lobby was full – they’d been waiting. A guy friend embraced me and shared that my closest friend, who was also my roommate, was killed in a car accident returning from fall break. My parents asked me to come home, but I told them I felt the need to be surrounded by others who knew Gabrielle. In those first weeks, I found Jesus, in a way I’d never understood before – that he wanted a relationship with me. It was a profound realization that I actually mattered to Him! It came as I was going through a Bible study on campus. The timing was crucial as the following semester I went to England to study and was tested beyond what I thought I was capable of handling. I had thought God was going to use me in missions but those five months in England shut that door for me. I asked the Lord “please don’t ever take me this far away from my family ever again. I can’t do this Lord.”

Eight years later, a friend of mine asked me to go on a mission trip to Ukraine. I had helped in packing clothes for Ukraine’s second-hand shops. I was even working as the graphic designer for the church’s missions’ team and felt that I was fulfilling the Lord’s calling in that so I answered my friend with an immediate “NO.” The Lord was not going to take me away from my family again, I knew He would not do that. A week later, another friend asked me to go teach English at a Bible camp in Ukraine, and again my immediate answer was “NO.” I had absolutely no desire to go to Ukraine, no ability or training with ESL and I could not go. Yet at the same time there was complete unrest in my heart.

At that time, I was in a Bible study, going slowly through Exodus. In God’s timing, I was reading the passage where Moses was telling God that he could not go back to Egypt because he was slow of speech and slow of tongue and in an instant I knew it was God’s will for me to go to Ukraine. Although that trip was very challenging for me, two days before our return the Lord spoke clearly to my heart and said, “You’re coming back here.” I told Him I couldn’t do it. Yet God went before me.

After four months of wrestling with the Lord, praying He would fulfill His purpose and then fighting against what He was trying to show me, a mentor of mine said to me, “You’ve been asking the Lord to answer your prayers, this is His answer.” I said, “Okay Lord, I’m all yours,” and in 2006 I joined a mission-sending agency, New International. In fall of that year, after 9 weeks of preparation and counsel, I returned to Kherson, Ukraine.

We made a visit to the local orphanage for disabled kids, and though these children were “untouchable,” Jesus spoke to my heart and told me to meet those kids. A young woman who was working with the kids said, “Unless volunteers like ourselves come in to spend time and touch and hold these bedridden children, no one does.” I nearly broke down and cried because I knew this was the most difficult thing the Lord was asking of me – this is why He wanted me in Ukraine.

That following summer was profound for me as God proved that He does answer prayer. I had been praying for Gabrielle’s former fiancé to come to the camp as it was where we three had met, but he was in the military and said it would be impossible. Yet in the middle of that week, he showed up.

In 2008 after two years of support-raising and pre-field training, I boarded a plane with 3 trunks and 2 suitcases and moved to Ukraine. I landed in Odessa scared and alone. I stayed in a hotel and then with various church families until my friend and I could find an apartment. She came down with tuberculosis within the first 3 months of my arrival. Tuberculosis is like the plague in Ukraine. It was a trying experience going through this with her. Soon after I was bit by a dog, airlifted to Austria for rabies shots, and isolated there for a week.

When I returned to Ukraine, I dove into language training and tried to gain the basics of Russian grammar. I was faced with a wall of challenge and frustration. Along with language study, I also spent four, 6-hour days out at the orphanage with the kids each week. It was an hour trip, walking and then finding the right bus to get there no matter the weather. It was important to those children that I be a consistent friend. They always asked if I would be back and grew to understand that I would. In 2014, God began to redirect my focus.

Many of the teens that I had been working with over the years were turning 18 and officially adults so they could no longer stay in an orphanage, a children’s institution. It was heartbreaking watching them be moved to another place where they were not wanted and did not know anyone. I asked the Lord and I asked others, is there no other way. “NO!” was always the answer. The Lord spoke to my heart and said “We’re going to create another way.”

In 2014, The Ukrainian Charitable Organization PROMISE was established so that the orphans would have a legal representative. I hired a director, my first full-time employee. Sasha, my project manager and director didn’t speak English, so I learned a whole new world of Russian – that pertaining to building and construction.

In March of 2016, we had about $100,000 to start building our first alternative home for disabled adults. I started with handicapped accessibility plans from the USA, but had them revised and approved to meet Ukrainian building codes. Then the challenge began. Stephen’s Home, PROMISE’s first one-story, Christ-centered family Christian Home was begun. I wanted the men to have freedom in a beautiful place that, on its own stated, “You are loved.” The family and assistants in the home would just add to that understanding. Although we were often told it couldn’t be done, the Lord taught me not to give up, so I haven’t. We now have a home with bedroom space for 13 young, disabled men. On September 19, 2019, the Grand Opening took place but there was still a lot of work to be completed.

The houseparents, Vechaslav and Natasha, along with their disabled son Kostya, moved into Stephen’s Home in February 2020. In December, PROMISE earned the legal right to provide social services to the severely disabled young men and women that have been the focus and passion from the very beginning.

On February 15, 2021, Slava moved into Stephen’s Home. He is learning what it means to be loved for the first time in his 26 years. He went to church for the first time and lunched with the pastor. He’s learning to overcome his fear of the exercise room where he may receive rehabilitation therapy. The list goes on…..

I now have a team of 19 who are devoted to pouring love and compassion into those who have been the outcasts of their society. If the Lord had told me this is what he’d planned for me back in 2008, I would have turned and run. Although I don’t know what needs to be done 100% of the time, the Lord makes it clear through others, at just the right time, usually at the last moment. That’s simply how He works and He stretches us and teaches us how to trust Him fully and to be faithful in all things.

Impact Brass and Singers – a song that stuck with me through the years: My life and my love, I give to repay, all I can sing and all I can say is I’m yours Lord, everything I’ve got. Everything I am, and everything I’m not. I’m yours Lord. Try me now and see, see if I can be completely yours.

The Gaithers

Chorus: I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital “P”
I can be anything
Anything God wants me to be