Dear friends and supporters of Izmail Life Care Center in Ukraine.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your families!!

Today is the last day of the year and for us Ukrainians it is a big holiday. When during the Soviet times the holiday of Christmas was neglected and diminished the New Year’s Eve became its cheap substitute. People cook a lot of good food, open presents and stay up all night long with the family and friends celebrating the coming of the New Year. During the celebration they sometimes talk about the past year about what they could accomplish in it and wish what they would like to do and what changes they would like to happen in the coming year. Today looking back at the year of 2010 I can say that for the Life Care Center it has become a year of sharing our experience and knowledge with many others here in Izmail and other cities of Ukraine.

During the last year about 400 people visited the Center and were able to get help they needed like counseling, teaching, emotional, spiritual and material support. About 1000 students were presented with our abstinence programs "Changes" and "You are unique" as well as more others written and presented by our volunteers.

In May and October Lifer Care Center organized two citywide Christian conferences for the parents "Family Worship" and "Almost adults" visited by 150 people.

With the purpose of sharing our vision and experience with other Christians, we held conferences "We are pro-life" in other cities in Ukraine like Reni, Belgorod-Dnestrovky, Khmelnitsky, Kiev, Odessa. After the conferences 7 volunteers went through three day training and now they can counsel crises pregnancies.

We have started to train volunteers to teach the abstinence programs to students through Skype. This way 4 volunteers were trained in different parts of Ukraine.

In the beginning and end of June we held two city wide events "Protect him before his birth", dedicated to a Ukrainian Day of Children Protection, and "White Ribbon" dedicated to those children who were not born because of the abortion. We shared the local stats on abortion and STDs, gave away 500 pro-life brochures, sang songs and played games with children. About 300 people took part in those events.

All these went along with our usual work of pre abortion, post abortion counseling, teaching in "School for Moms" and teaching pro-life and abstinence programs to students of local high schools, holding the support groups for young mothers, follow up with former clients through women’s clubs, Bible study groups and clothes exchange.

We are so happy that God has blessed our work this past year and we could fulfill our plans and even accomplished more then we dreamed about. He gave us everything we needed including health, zeal, desire, new ideas, finances and endurance and we praise Him for that.

In the coming year we would like to start counseling women in the women’s clinic before the abortion and would like to try to work with students in dorms. Please pray that we would be allowed to do that by city authorities and raise about $2000 for equipment and furniture.

In a good Ukrainian tradition before the New Year I wish you good health, happiness and success. The difference is that I wish you all that in God and with God.

Thank you so much for your help, support, prayers and encouragement.

Snezhana Popova, on behalf of the volunteers and staff of the Life Care Center.