Serving orphans changes you cardinally. Especially when you think that your life is bad. This is the one of few ways passing which we can learn true unconditional love, 
which doesn’t expect anything in exchange. Communicating with children, I can’t tell that they ideally obedient and kind, there is even everything on the contrary. 
They are malicious because they are glad and happy that somebody comes to visit them, spend some time and organize lessons. I am constantly thinking that we can do something to improve conditions of their life at least slightly, we can organize for them some actions to see the smiles on their faces, we can find some time for them . 
But will it bring real changes in their life? Working with children, I see God’s hand in many respects, his blessings, support and favor. Every trip of this month I worked with small kids. We showed them animated cartoons “Elisha”, “Daniel”, “Prophet Elijah “. 
We always sing with the children before a lesson and when you ask them – “Will we sing your favorite song?” I love when they ask to sing the Christmas song -“Let’s light Candles”.
After an animated cartoon, we draw a conclusion and receive feedback, and I understand that is interesting to them, and children understand. All of them understand!!! 
When time passes from trip to trip analyzing myself I understand that the children are not indifferent to me. When they write to you, you always find a minute to answer. Children became like a part of your family, 
and with each trip you understand how much you love them and trips to a boarding school become an integral part of life. The senior children have had remarkable discussions about “Despondency”, “Pride”, “Thirst of revenge”, and “Condemnations” this month. I was at one of them (Thirst of revenge). I liked how Dima could present interestingly this subject trying all possible keys to hearts of the children. Dima did accurate comparisons and a conclusion, I saw that the children were interested, but even more important that it was clear for them and understandable. I am very glad that I can serve children. God does the work in my heart through this ministry.
Archive for October, 2015
The time is passing, the seasons are changing each other and we still keep on going to orphanages of our country.
The orphanage in Smilovichy is “an island of hope” and it encourages us with the hope that everything will change soon for better.
There are great orphans there in Smilovichy and the kids start living a new life, in new conditions, making new relationships with newcomers. A new world or social place is being created in the orphanage now. 
Alyna and Sasha, a sister and a brother, unwillingly became witnesses to cruel reality of the world they live in. These kids long for coming back home where their mum is waiting for them. They are looking forward to and praying to see her in person and not only to talk with her by phone. Not all Belarusian families live happily. 
There are a lot of families in Belarus who live on the breadline and aren’t even capable of paying month utility bills. Unfortunately, kids in such families have to experience the consequences. Imagine, there’s no electricity in the house and the kids can’t do their homework or read books. That’s the reason they have to stay at the orphanage.
We play games, watch cartoons, and sing songs at our meetings. Moreover, we have Bible studies which tell the kids about 
Jesus Christ who lived on Earth once. A lot of kids are disappointed with constant troubles of their parents, that’ s why Bible studies help encourage them a bit and give hope. This month we introduced the story about how Jesus healed centurion’s servant and how He calmed the storm.
Both stories show how great our God is and how many miracles He does for people and keeps on doing them even now if you have faith.
At one of the meetings we prayed together with kids about those orphans who got into hospital. In several days they recovered and came back to the orphanage. It was a great example for the orphans who prayed that God hears and answers prayers! All this shows that Bible stories about Jesus’s miracles and orphan’s prayers give hope and faith to the hearts! Praise the Lord for this time!
We are grateful to all who show interest to the ministry for orphans and pray for kids together with us!
After short summer break we came back to visit orphan’s children from Smilovich’s orphanage. We received great news that most of the kids sent to the foster families decided to take care of kids. 
All kids except Arseniy, are new and many of them never heard about Jesus or anything relate to Bible and religion.
Our main goal is to be friends them and let them have a personal relationship with God. It is very important for us to create atmosphere of trust and acceptance. We want every child to feel loved because that’s what every one of them really needs.
During the time that we spent together, we tell them what Jesus has done on the earth, how He healed people and show signs and wonders to them. We teach them how to pray and believe that God will answer.
All lessons are build in form of games to make it fun and easy to remember. Before every class we ask them what they remember from the previous lesson. And its so amazing to see how kids remember almost everything and actively involved during the lesson. 
Also children just love it when Zhenia comes with guitar and we can sing songs together. It brings so much happiness and laughter. We even had a shy boy named Artem, and after two weeks he started to singing with us.
Its amazing to see how God transforms their lives. Day by day we can see how kids worries disappear and become happier. Their aggression goes away and they feel welcomed, loved and protected with us. Children started to ask God to fix their lives and take away everything that is wrong and bad for them. The fact that their parents have betrayed and left them obviously hurt and have brought a lot of damage to their lives but we strongly believe that God has a plan for them and has a new destiny for every one of them. Praise the Lord that He is working with these beautiful children and their hearts to bring them truth and new life.
A new school year has begun in our country. All the children came back to the desks 
and opened their books. Again we started to visit orphanages every week.
This month we have visited the orphanage in Rudensk a few times. One of our first meetings was aimed to get acquinted with new children and revive the relations with the other guys that we didn’t see for long because of the holidays. The meeting was organised in a free form – the girls communicated at the benches, the b
oys – near the horizontal bars. Everyone was excited.
Next time we came to the orphanage, there were no free places to sit. We discussed how and when people should apologise. Everyone is so different. There are guys who never apoplogise even when they are guilty. Also there are guys who always apologise even if they are not guilty. We carried out an experiment to show that when people are guilty they should apologise, 
when they are not guilty they shouldn’t.
Moreover at the beginning of this school year we spoke about the advantages of obedience to teachers, to wise people and mainly to God.
At the end of the month we had a stag-p
arty and a hen-party. We discussed an inportant topic – personal hygiene. The lessons for boys and girls differed a lot. Girls were in a warm classroom, ate different sweet-staff and talked about physical and spiritual hygiene. The boys had a real physical challenge. After they got tired they discussed how important it is to keep your body pure.
We started our ministry this way. We hope you will support us and pray for us and all the orphans in Belarus.
The summer has gone too quic
kly and September came. The month is associated differently: for some this is the Harvest time, for some other people – the beginning of the new academic year, and for us this is the beginning of our service in the orphanage. For me as a leader this year is very special. Several people joined our service on a regular basis. This is very encouraging for me and big help. I thank God that in this service I’m not the only one from my church. We have many plans for these children and I’m sure we’ll realize them with God’s help.
For the first visit we invited our friend, clown-animator Maxim. He is a very funny man and children loved him. He gave air balloons to everybody and taught how to make different figures from them such as swords, dogs and etc. The children were excited! The culmination was soap bubble show! Maxim even told the whole story using soap bubbles and that was incredible! It was such happiness to see the children laughing, especially the little ones. Then they came to me asking when Maxim comes next time?
For the next trip we were not alone again. Some people who do bike trials professionally joined us. It was for the first time in our lives when we saw such tricks. It was unfor
gettable. We couldn’t imagine that people can do such things with bikes: they jumped over planks, got on top of balks on one wheel, jumped over people and so on. Then they allowed riding bikes. Children tried to do something similar to what they saw but it was difficult physically and technically. Unbelievable! It was a pleasure for me to see children having fun so sincerely.
The last visit to the orphanage was associated with the topic “The Bible”. We told children that regardless of religion Christians read The Bible and believe It is the Word of God. We told how many books are in the Old and New Testament, who and how 
wrote the Bible. The most important thing – we told about the main topics described in the Bible: God’s Character, the Sacred Justice for sins and disobedience, God’s blessing for faith and obedience, Jesus as the Savior and Sacrifice for our sins, God’s Kingdom and His glory. Children didn’t know many things but they were interested to listen to us and to ask questions. We are glad children are not indifferent to the Bible. They were interested to find out what is written specially to them in this Holy Bible. Join us in our prayers for these children that the Word of God reaches their hearts!
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 