Reaching out in faith

Soviet emigre family to make return trip to Ukraine later this month with a

mission to expand children's center

With less than a month before making a return trip to the Ukraine, Moses Lake resident Natalya Skala doesn't have enough money to purchase her airplane ticket.

But that is of no importance to this mother of seven, whose family emigrated to the United States 16 years ago from Ukraine and is returning July 29 for a month to continue work on a children's center she helped open last year.

The center, called "The Light of the World," is a nonprofit organization with a mission to serve abandoned children with HIV/AIDS.

The focus of Skala's upcoming trip will be to prepare the center to make the transition from its current location that only has room to house 15 children, to a much larger facility that can board 150.

With the many uncertainties of this next trip, which range from paying for travel costs to confronting the government that is currently trying to shut down the center, Skala looks to her faith in God.

The bigger facility that Skala hopes to move the center into is an abandoned building that needs a new roof, heating and plumbing system.

Outside of the issues surrounding the center, Skala also recognizes the socio-economic hardships at stake within the country from her own first-hand experiences.

Raised in the Ukraine, a country that only within the last 14 years has gained its independence from the former Soviet Union, Skala remembers a childhood spent running from the secret police and the terrible fates of some of her own family members who were killed at the hands of the government for their faith in God.

Those are realities she doesn't want any more children to have to face.

"I was not able to take one penny with me, not even pictures," Skala said of the governmental restrictions on what she could bring with her on her family's move to the U.S. in 1989.

Despite those strict controls, Skala managed to tuck pictures in between packed clothes, and made the trip safely to the U.S. where the family settled in Moses Lake.

Their arrival in Moses Lake was through a sponsorship by the Moses Lake Assembly of God Church that arranged for the Skalas to have a rental home, food and language training.

They left behind a past and a place Skala and her husband, Anatoliy, didn't see as suitable to raise their children in.

For some, it might be hard to understand why Skala and others would risk going back to a place that brought so much suffering.

The inspiration to start a children's center in her homeland began one day while standing in the streets of Ukraine on a return trip in 2003.

With two young children, abandoned and living with HIV at her side, Skala had set out to find a preschool that would house the children.

At the protest of one man, a leader in that particular Ukrainian community, Skala was told no one would ever take those children in because they had HIV.

"I will do anything in my power to help those (people)," Skala said to herself, holding the two young children at her side.

Such a reaction was enough to cause what one might call a righteous anger within Skala that made her and her family want to fight all the more for and with the people of Ukraine.

When Skala is not on site in Ukraine helping with the center, she spends the work week at home in Moses Lake making calls to the center and preparing for the move to the larger facility.

Skala's husband works 16-hour days just to support their family, and to raise extra money for the children's center. During the summer, the Skalas' 16-year-old son Elijah goes to work with his father.

"I felt that (it) would be a project of Moses Lake," Skala said of the children's center.

And it has become just that.

Cynthia Tampien of Moses Lake, who two years ago joined Skala on a trip to the Ukraine for missionary and humanitarian work, found renewed purpose for her own life after recovering from a personal injury.

The opportunity to go to Ukraine was a way for Tampien to find healing from her own suffering.

"It's changing the world one person at a time," Tampien said of the missionary work and opening of the children's center.

Linda Allen, a member of the Moses Lake Assembly of God Church, will be going with the Skala and three of her children later this month.

A writer of children's stories and actively involved in children's ministries here at home, Allen felt a calling on her life to take her gift of storytelling beyond the Columbia Basin. Allen will have her stories translated into Ukrainian for the trip.

"I really felt that God is calling me to do more for Him," Allen said.

Knowing the extreme poverty many of the children and families in Ukraine live with, Allen is not one to shy away from serving others. Her decision to go willingly to the Ukraine is why she believes she is meant to be part of the missionary work the Skala's have also undertaken.

But if faith is evidence of what can be done in all circumstances, this will not be the last trip Skala or others from Moses Lake will make to help the people of Ukraine.

"I know God is bigger and he is the one who fights for those kids," Skala said.