by April Jurgensen | Oct 23, 2017 | Orphan Care Issues, Russia, Short-Term Missions
One of my favorite parts of my job is taking teams to meet the children I’ve grown to love in children’s homes around the world. Each team is unique in its composition, as God blends personalities, backgrounds and gifts to accomplish His purposes. I relish hearing...
by April Jurgensen | Sep 18, 2017 | Orphan Care Issues, Prayer
As I prepared for our second VBS in a Russian orphanage, selecting a curriculum was a bigger challenge than I expected. I knew it would have to work cross-culturally, avoiding the references many of our themed curricula have to things like newspaper carriers or...
by April Jurgensen | Sep 11, 2017 | Orphan Care Issues, Prayer
** If you’re looking for “Your Measure of Forgiveness, please click here** Give us today our daily bread- Matt. 6:11 (NIV) I haven’t always appreciated this line in The Lord’s Prayer the way I do today. I mean, I’ve understood since childhood that to ask...
by April Jurgensen | Jul 31, 2017 | Orphan Care Issues, Prayer
For me, there’s no more difficult concept to discuss with an orphan than that of God’s will. Imagine sitting with Nikita. He remembers vividly the night his family’s apartment caught fire. The smell of smoke was already thick when his father scooped him up into his...
by April Jurgensen | Jul 5, 2017 | Orphan Care Issues, Prayer
Are you a list maker? I am. I’m one of those weirdos who gets a charge out of making a to-do list for the day and triumphantly striking items off as they’re completed. Sometimes, mid-morning, I’ll even write “shower” on the list and cross it out as something I’ve...
by April Jurgensen | Jun 15, 2017 | Orphan Care Issues, Prayer
What was the first prayer you ever prayed? Perhaps it was a prayer of salvation when you first submitted your heart to Christ. Or maybe it was a prayer uttered in desperation to a God you weren’t even certain could answer. Having grown up in a Christian home, I was...
by The Boaz Project | Jul 14, 2016 | Orphan Care Issues, Short-Term Missions
By Natalie Nohr As I boarded the first plane of many, I braced my heart for the emotional warfare that I felt sure was waiting in Russia. While preparing to leave I was told again and again, “That will be a heartbreaking experience,” and, “I’m sure that will be very...
by April Jurgensen | Jan 26, 2016 | Orphan Care Issues, Ways to Help Orphans
It was a cold, snowy, and, to be quite honest, depressing Sunday night when the truths that lie deep within Psalm 34:8 were spoken into my life. I was living in Vladimir, Russia at the time and was struggling with feelings of discouragement and failure when that verse...
by April Jurgensen | Dec 22, 2015 | India, Orphan Care Issues
You know that popular Christmas song that goes something like this, “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. The very next day you gave it away?” If you’re not familiar with it, then chances are you haven’t turned on your radio around Christmas for the past 5 years. ...
by April Jurgensen | Dec 10, 2013 | Orphan Care Issues
This past year I have spent more time inside emergency and operating rooms than I have in the previous twenty plus years combined. Stitches, surgeries, unexpected trips to the ER, pain, and disappointment became the norm. On November 11th, about two weeks after...
