The Wedding Feast

Jenny, Lena and Vitalik

Weddings often bring tears of joy, but sometimes there is much more than usual behind those tears. Jenny (O'Leary) Kelly started Safe Haven International after she came to Ukraine to help at a summer camp for orphans, fell in love with the kids, and saw how many of them just fall away once they leave the orphanages. Her idea was to have a home or homes where kids could come and live, learn of Christ's love and know what it means to be a part of a real family. That idea started to become a reality 9 or 10 years ago, when Safe Haven purchased a home outside of Kiev.

Anya, Lena, Bogdan and Vitalik

About 6 years ago, Bogdan and Anya became the houseparents here, along with Jenny. When Jenny met Andrew and they started their life together, Bogdan and Anya continued on here. This past weekend, Vitalik and Lena, who lived here at the Safe Haven house got married at the camp Andrew and Jenny started to give orphans and other hurt kids a place to go for healing.

Most of the people at the wedding were "kids' who either live or lived at the Safe Haven house and other kids who grew up in orphanage in Kaniv. At one point, I looked around and thought how awesome it is for so many of those kids to have a chance at a normal life-to know what a family is, to have a wedding, to have a relationship with Christ and just to belong.

For Jenny, it was a dream come true and the tears she had were ones that come from a heart that saw a need and didn't run from it.