Nita Hanson volunteered with the International School Project and Campus Crusade for a three-week-stint in Ukraine in October 1995, teaching a morals and ethics curriculum to teachers in the schools. She returned the following year with the Comission and Navigators for an entire year to teach the Bible. During this stay, she began visiting orphanages and her heart was captivated by the children and saddened by the conditions they endured. Seeing the hopelessness of orphans and disabled people all around her, Nita felt that God was calling her to minister in Ukraine on a long-term basis.

Returning home to California in June 1997, she began forming her non-profit ministry and raising the $20,000 she would need for the first year. She returned to Ukraine in October 1997 to begin the ministry now known as God’s Hidden Treasures.

God’s Hidden Treasures currently ministers four orphanages within the region of Bila Tserkva. Nita has been instrumental in finding families to adopt several of these orphans as well as facilitating needed medical treatment. Nita arranged for two–year-old Dima to come to the U.S. in October 1999 to receive prosthetic legs. A family decided to adopt him while he was here. He now resides just outside Portland, Oregon with his new family. Since that time, two other children have been treated at Shriners’ Hospital through GHT.

In October 2000, four young men from the Boy’s House Orphanage for the mentally retarded received their first chance to live in a private home. They were moved to a home purchased by God’s Hidden Treasures in the village of Forcee. There they are being taught Christian values and how to live outside of an institution.

In 1998, the Wheelchair Ministry of God’s Hidden Treasures began as three custom-fitted wheelchairs were taken into the city of Bila Tserkva from the U.S. Since that time, more than 1,500 wheelchairs have been shipped to Ukraine and distributed by God’s Hidden Treasures’ Ukraine ministry team. In addition to receiving wheelchairs, the families become a part of the Wheelchair Ministry and have regular contact with the Ukrainian ministry team. They also receive provisions of food, medicine and clothing on an “as needed” basis. However, the most important thing they receive is love.

A Wheelchair Repair Center was opened on November 1, 2001. With the opening of this Center, we are now able to refurbish, repair, and custom fit wheelchairs right in the Ukraine. We are also able to keep wheelchairs on hand which enables us to deliver a wheelchair to a prospective candidate within days of hearing of their need.

Our dream for the wheelchair ministry is to duplicate in other cities in Ukraine the method of ministry that God’s Hidden Treasures provides for the handicapped. In November 2002, two new cities were opened to this form of ministry - Kherson and Zhitomer. In both cities God’s Hidden Treasures is working with existing ministries in Ukraine (one a church and the other a Christian charitable organization). Since that date many additional cities have been added.

Other areas of ministry have grown out of the ministry to the handicapped. In the Ukraine stoke victims are generally sent home to die and rarely is any effort made to provide therapy or rehabilitation. In response to this tragedy the Stroke Rehabilitation Program was begun in October 2001.

An initial group of 14 stoke patients were chosen to begin this segment of ministry. As all 14 had their strokes at least one year prior to the initialization of this program, success (by the world’s standards) looked impossible. After less than one year, seven of those chosen were walking and all but one has improved significantly. The program now has over 80 patients and they are being treated with remarkable success.

Many of our wheelchair recipients have diabetes and the number of amputations is out of proportion to what it should be for the size of the population. As a result of this, the Diabetic Program was initiated in April 2002. We are working with the local Diabetic Association to put on bi-monthly educational seminars. Our investigations into this problem showed that almost no one receives adequate testing of their blood, which is the biggest contributor to amputations, blindness and premature death. God’s Hidden Treasures is committed to placing a glucometer in the home of every diabetic and to supply each person with the necessary testing strips.

Since July 2000, the ministry has contributed over $1,000,000 of medical supplies to the hospitals of Bila Tserkva and Kiev. The supplies were made possible through Direct Relief of Santa Barbara, the Rotary Club, and private donations by various hospitals in the Ventura and Los Angeles County area and through special projects with some of our supporting churches.

One of the most touching facets of the ministry is that Nita is teaching Ukrainian citizens to help themselves and then help others.

One member of the Ukrainian team has opened a home orphanage. Several other team members have become teachers of the Bible. Two of our handicapped men have been trained in wheelchair repair and now staff the Wheelchair Repair Center; and two are teaching computer classes at the Center for Cerebral Palsy in Bila Tserkva.