“There’s no greater happiness than to get them out of the darkness”

Interview of Bishop Vitaly Maksimyuk about “The House of Hope”

Christian service can take many different forms: some carry the Good News to small nations, others put all their strength into the growth of local churches, still others serve the homeless or addicted, and the list goes on and on.
Bishop Vitaly Maksimyuk, a missionary and pastor with more than thirty years of experience, received a special ministry from God. Together with his team, he saves children and adolescents, and with God’s help, brings them back to life.

Tell us about your ministry in Ukraine. How did you get there after dozens of years of service in Siberia?
God spoke to me about Ukraine 7 years ago. Yes, I really dedicated many years of my life to ministering in Siberia and I continue to carry this ministry. But the Lord told me to return to the land I had come from, and to bless it.

I did not immediately understand what it was all about, and after a while God spoke to me again. He told me about Odessa, so we ended up in Ukraine. By that time, I had been a pastor for more than 20 years and I could not think of anything except saving people and planting a local church. So, the first thing we did when we sent our missionaries to Ukraine in 2012 was to start a local church. We began to build a missionary base there.

How did it happen that you began to minister to children in particular?
We began to visit the nearby villages preaching the Gospel, and saw a great need for fatherhood. There are a lot of orphans, children who even become orphans when their parents are still alive. A huge number of children who are left to themselves from morning to evening, they have nothing to eat, and they grow up on the street. Most of them have no fathers, and even if they do have one, the father either does not live in the family or drinks. Most often, mom also drinks. That is why children get to orphanages. The Lord showed us a great need in this country, in this area.

How did you decide to change this situation?
We began to visit orphanages, and every time the children sent us off, they asked: “When will you come again?”, “Will you take us with you?” And we began to take orphans. At first it was one, then the second and the third. The missionary house gradually turned into an orphanage – we call it the “House of Hope”. Now we have 10 children: the youngest child is 11 years old and the oldest one is 16.

It turns out that God had a much larger vision of your ministry in Ukraine than you did.
His vision is always greater than ours. Gradually, I saw that one of the main goals why The Lord invited us to Odessa was not only to plant the local church, but also to raise a whole generation of ministers of God, and not just one generation.
It is so amazing to see these young boys and girls who I have breakfast with, while in Odessa, share a Word every morning. They all accepted Jesus, were born again and baptized in water and spiritually. I would say they are like a clean slate, like clay in our hands, so we can grow the servants of God. The vocation of being pastors, ministers is clearly seen on some of them.

Now I can say that my vision of the ministry in Odessa is to raise the local church, save people, and raise generations of ministers of God.

What is your goal? To meet the needs of children, fill their need for love, or anything else?
We do not have the task to simply make them good citizens, meeting their social needs. It’s good of course. We take care of them, feed them, dress them, give an education – some of them are now studying at university. We did our best to help them to be enrolled at good educational institutions. We live as one big family, have breakfast, lunch and dinner together.

But our main goal is not just to raise their standard of living, but to raise up servants of God from among them, who during the last days before the coming of The Lord will carry the Gospel, will oppose the Antichrist system, will be strong, bold, holy, uncompromising leaders who will be filled with God’s love. They will carry the Gospel to the places where The Lord will send them.

How do you plan to continue this ministry? Raise these children, and then take others?
Recently, I spoke to the director of one of the boarding schools. With tears in her eyes she asked: “Take our children. I will give you everyone you select. Take them please. They dream that when they finish school in June that you will take them away. How many can you take?”

Our entire team has a place in their hearts for a much larger number of children than our house can presently accommodate.

We have a feeling that God has placed us near the source – all doors in this country are open for us. We recently talked to some people at the level of the adviser of the President of Ukraine. We have a great number of young people who we are not yet able to take because of the lack of space. Therefore, we want to buy a piece of land near our House of Hope to provide more places for children.

Many prefer to donate their finances on planting new churches, printing evangelical literature, supporting missionaries and local ministries. Why do you think people will have a desire to help children?
I’ll tell you about one of our boys. His dad is paralyzed and lives in one of the villages. He is not able to take care of himself or earn a living for himself or family. The boy’s mother is an alcoholic.

Once we came to that village and saw a man in the empty ruined house in a terrifying atmosphere. He had not eaten for a long time. We took care of him, brought him food, tried to talk to him. It was the boy’s dad. It was impossible to look at that picture without tears. The man’s son was near him – left to himself, doomed to take care of his own life.
Some time later when we arrived there again, the father’s bed was already on the ground, because someone from the neighbors, drunkards had dismantled the wooden floor in order to sell it and buy vodka.

We took his son to us, to wrestle him from this terrible atmosphere and give him hope. I call this boy “son” now. He asks me: “Pastor, please take me with you wherever you go.” I see prudence in him, great thirst to know God. He experienced the love of God very deeply. I believe in some years the servant of God will grow in him and he will lead many people to salvation.

Each of the children has a similar story. I believe that The Lord will lift these children from the ruins and His Name will be glorified! It’s worth investing your life in it.

You are a pastor, a bishop; you have churches in different regions of Russia, in Ukraine, and now you minister to the children in the House of Hope. How do you have the strength to do all this?
Only by the grace of God, as well as a wonderful team in Siberia and here in Odessa. We do it with my wife and faithful helper Nadezhda. I am very grateful to everyone who has stood with us.

To be honest, we are truly happy only when our life is filled with sense. God has been blessing me abundantly throughout my life, but the sixth decade of my life is marked with a special blessing from The Lord – we can pull children out of the darkness and nurture new generations of disciples to fall in love with Christ.

We invite everyone who hears or reads this to live for other people, live for The Lord! Find the man of God in that place where God is doing something and stand next to him. Do not live for yourself. Give all your years, all your strength to the ministry. Perhaps you will often be tired like us, but you will be completely grateful and happy. Give yourself away!

Recently two brothers from Western Ukraine have joined us. Before arriving, they asked: “Pastor, do we need to take sleeping bags?”, I said: “Why?” – “Well, we are ready to sleep on the floor … ready to pay for ourselves. We want to come and build. We will not leave this place until you say that we have completed everything. We don’t need any money. ” One of the brothers is 30 years old, and the other is 26. I was so touched by it. But I understand them very well – there is no more happiness than having distributed yourself to people then see the good fruit.

If you can provide some assistance to our ministry – it can be anything – finances, products, building materials, construction assistance – we will be very grateful to you. Let’s serve The Lord together!

Newsperson – Sergey Mityanin
According to the information from press center of Covenant Church.