(Photo credit: Roey Ahram via Flickr)
Ukraine (MNN) — Many important conversations take place over a cup of coffee.
Future spouses take their first steps toward “happily ever after.” Business leaders discuss deals and discounts. Diplomats negotiate and talk world peace.
As important as all of these conversations are, none can rival the chit-chat between coffee shop counselors in Kiev and the vulnerable women they’ve met online.
“Babies are being saved in coffee shops in Ukraine,” says LIFE International’s Melinda Delahoyde.
“At our last count, when we last heard, 1 to 2 unborn babies were being saved every week.”
What?! How?
Portrait of a young pregnant woman in summer park
(Photo, caption courtesy LIFE International)
Delahoyde’s claim sounds unusual until you’ve heard the back-story.
Last summer, at LIFE International’s Eastern European annual training summit, Delahoyde’s colleagues connected with a young couple from Kiev.
The couple had been wanting to save unborn lives, but since their city was so war-torn, they couldn’t start a pregnancy center.
Instead, they had started a Web site.
“They’re reaching them online–the women who are determined to have abortions,” explains Delahoyde.
“The first place a woman will go, when she thinks she might be pregnant, is to her phone. And, she Googles things like ‘morning after pill’ [or] ‘abortion.’”
By encountering women at this point–when they’re searching for options and answers, coffee shop counselors trained by the pro-life young couple from Kiev get an important opportunity.
“Instead of doing the counseling with these young women in a pregnancy center, they talk with them online,” Delahoyde explains.
“They text, they chat, they build that relationship online, and then they meet with them at coffee shops around the city.”
When coffee shop counselors and the troubled women meet up, talk eventually turns to Christ. Over a cup of coffee, pregnant women don’t just find answers for today: they find hope for eternity.
What now?
(Map courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The young couple who attended LIFE International’s training session want to reach beyond Kiev.
“They’re building across the country an online network to reach women who are most at-risk of having an abortion,” shares Delahoyde.
As you pray for this couple, would you consider helping LIFE International train more pro-life leaders just like them?
Delahoyde states, “People ask us, ‘How can we be part of this work?’ The motto at LIFE International is: pray, sow, and go.”
Click the links below to learn more about each opportunity:
Would this type of approach work in West Michigan?