LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

On October 12, 2013 we organized the conference in Minsk “Belarus without orphans”. This conference was dedicated to the people of three categories: support to the parents who adopted orphans, motivation for those who consider adoption, and training for those who work with orphans.
Conference attended parents who adopted orphans as well as people and families who have the desire in their hearts to adopt or foster a teenaged or younger orphan. All in all there were 150 people at the conference!
We gave thanks to God for the reason that the conference did take place. We also thank everyone who prayed for the conference and upported it financially. On the way to reach the dream – Belarus without orphans – there always will be difficulties and resistance because orphans are the most spiritually unprotected category of children.
Our dream is the country without orphans. But sometimes the most unprepared audience are the parents! Many have the right motivation. Many have not just desire but even material abilities to adopt children. But the curse of our age is the lack of practical knowledge and experience of adoption. Because of this some adoptive parents among evangelical Christians return adopted orphans to the orphanages. We are fighting this phenomenon. At the conference we tried to address many important problems: adopting a traumatized child, first months and first years of adoption, adopted children in teenage times – how to help a child to go through the hard times of character development. The adopted children would not remain young for a long time but sometimes because of lack of knowledge comes disappointment and then returning of orphans back to the orphanage.
One of the seminars was for adoptive parents. At this seminar we talked about emotional burn out and how you can help yourself. Many adoptive parents who adopted more than one child slip out, become disappointed and give up. All because they have much work, everyday cares and on top of that problems in rising adopted children for which they were not prepared.
Many parents do not dare to adopt because of the fear of the genes. Others become so confused that they do not see any other solution except as to return adopted children to orphanage. We had families who openly talked about these issues. Disappointed people think that this is their problem but it is the Satan who seeds doubts in people’s hearts and they start to even waver in faith. What is going to happen to them if they would not find support? We already have 30 Christian families that returned children to orphanages. This is the Satan’s strategy – to disappoint people in themselves and then to beat them out to leave the churches through their feeling of guilt and total nullity.
I am thankful to God that He has showed us these needs and showed us the way of how we can support these people. Besides the encouragement the conference gave people the real psychological, juridical and practical help at the seminars. At the seminars people had the opportunity to speak about their everyday problems and to get help they needed.
At the conference attendants had the opportunity to hear Gods point of view on the situation with orphans through the teachings and witnessing.
People who serve to the orphans in the orphanages and shelters learned the practical skills for this ministry. They also had the opportunity to exchange resources and skills. This was also very helpful for those who try to organize this kind of ministry.
This is the third year when we held this conference. At the end of each conference we asked people to fill out the questionnaire – we wanted to give people the opportunity to give their feedback and suggestions. We can see that many people need juridical and psychological help. In response to this need we have opened a consultation center for adopting parents where people can come with their needs.
We believe that our common dream – Belarus without orphans – is real if we unite together as a society in our support for adopting parents and orphans.