Pastor Shane tells about the beginnings of New Hope Outreach.

How the ministry of New Hope Outreach began Reaching Orphans and Widows with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Elderly Suffer Greatly With Little Hope of a Future. I have been going to Russia since 1985. I have been and continue to work with pastors and lay leaders who have spent up to 25 years in prison under the old communist regime and many have suffered greatly for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

My wife Evelyn, family and I have worked with troubled youth for over 35 years. We have had 58 foster children in our home over the years and most of them were teenagers from America, those kids who in our society, nobody wanted.

I was invited to a Pastor's seminar in the city of Perm, Russia in 1994. Perm is a city of over one-million people located about 1,000 miles northeast of Moscow on the edge of the Ural mountains near Siberia. It is the last major European city before going into Asia. Until 1992, Perm had been isolated from the rest of the world because of its armament facilities and approximately 100 political prisons. The famous "salt mines of Siberia" are located in the Perm Region.

There are thousands of elderly men and women without a livable income. Living conditions are deplorable for some of them. There is begging, hopelessness, and depression.

In the Perm Region there are in excess of 10,000 orphans and more than 100 orphanages. While visiting one of these orphanages in 1994, God spoke to me about adopting a little 13 year-old girl. In asking about adoption the orphanage director took me to the Minister of Education, who was responsible for all the orphans and orphanages in the Perm Region. I was told that I was the first American to ever adopt from this area. The minister of education was in awe that I would want to adopt an older child.

I noticed some things at my daughter's orphanage. The only toy for 117 children was a single broken roller skate. Many of the kids had no socks or underwear. The kids daily ration of food consisted of a couple slices of bread and a bowl of cabbage soup.

I came back to America and through miracles of God I was back in Russia three months later to adopt my daughter. It was November, 1994, I stepped off the train in Perm and it was 20 below zero. I immediately went to my daughter's orphanage and saw some of the hardships these poor children endure. Children working in the yard shoveling snow without any hats or gloves. Inside the orphanage it was 30 degrees. Every child wore every stitch of clothing they owned. Water pipes were frozen and would be the rest of the winter.

I visited baby orphanages where babies had diaper rash so bad that it turned into fungal problems that covered their little bodies. There was a room set aside in some of these orphanages for children in such severe conditions to go and die. There is no money in this bankrupt society to buy medicine for these precious children.

I came back to America determined to help these kids. I went back to these same baby orphanages six-months later with vitamins, anti-fungal cream and baby clothes. The director just wept and wept in my arms with a heart full of gratitude.

Through the grace of God, He has opened to us, with favor, the area of the Perm Region and beyond to minister to and help thousands of orphan's, widows and street kids.

We provide vitamins, toys, computers, basic medicines, food, education, workers, bibles, tracts, evangelism, love, love and more love for these precious children. God says that He is the Father to the fatherless and He wants to be that through all of us.

While looking for a name for our organization some of my board members and I were visiting a college for handicapped young men and women. They invited me to share the Gospel with them. None had ever heard a Gospel presentation. I shared about God's love and over half of them gave their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we were preparing to leave this college the local Russian Pastor was in tears as he held me in his arms and said to me, "You have given these lost souls 'New Hope' and we knew in that moment what our organizational name should be.

Although I founded the organization I am governed by a board of directors and donated money is used as wisely as possible in the ministry to the children. We have a small staff with large responsibilities.

We are a Christian non-denominational 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and all gifts are tax deductible.