“November 8 is the World Day of Prayer for Orphans. If you care about the futures of orphans, you can make a difference! You may not only pray for orphans during the day, but also visit them in orphanages, run charity campaigns at you local church or organization. Besides that, during your church service you may devote sermons, songs, poems etc. to this issue.”
Our service in the orphanage in Vileyka is growing very fast. Our team is working with two groups of junior school and all groups of senior school who want to attend our lessons. I want to share how we work with the older groups. 
We don’t have a music worker now, so we put emphasis on biblical lessons and sometimes on games. We try to make our lessons bright and recognizable using pictures, videos, cartoons. We started from learning the Creation firstly the children to know the truth and secondly to dispel an illusion of the Theory of Evolution. Children didn’t like the idea that they came from monkeys. 
The truth that God created them and everything that is around us and that they are God’s children they liked most of all. They were astonished at God’s power to create the World for 6 days. The most difficult thing to understand was that they are created in imitation of God.
Several next meetings we spent talking about God’s Names. The Bible gives us different names such as Elohim (Almighty God), All-seeing God, Justifying God, Emmanuel (God is with us), 
Adonai (Lord and Sovereign), Yahve (God will trace) on which we stopped to learn in details on Joseph’s example. We told that God will trace their lives if they obey God’s Word not succumbing to devil’s tricks. During that lesson I tried to draw a parallel between Joseph’s life and orphans’ lives as any orphanage is not the place for a childhood. Moreover, many children are victims of abuse. 
Joseph’s life seemed to be much more difficult for children than theirs, but with a happy end! The reason is that Joseph stayed trust in God and never gave up. And God blessed him. I am sure that for children Joseph’s life will be an example to follow.
On the last day of October we decided to plan a trip to Minsk for children from Vileyka’s orphanage to distract them from Halloween. There were two major aims of this trip: evangelical and cultural (or entertaining). Firstly, we visited the Museum of Great Patriotic War were guides told and showed us the history of our country during World War II. It was very interesting. Then we moved to our church Bethlehem, were children had dinner. 
After dinner, there were games for children, relay races, songs, testaments and prayers. Children left us with happy smiles on their faces! Firstly, because the dinner was so tasty that even our team couldn’t eat everything given. Secondly, both children and educators were at our Baptist church for the first time and they were interested in the place where people who visit them every week and tell them about God go to. There is one Baptist church in Vileyka, but they don’t have a proper building,
that’s why every Sunday there is a service but at pastor’s house. That’s why neither children nor their educators know about Christian churches. I was asked a lot of questions about our belief and our church. It was a pleasure for me to answer to them. I am glad educators have positive opinions about our church now as they can have an effect on children. If the educators speak only good things about our team and our service, the children will also look on us as an authority. Also, the educators will tell the rest educators about their trip to Minsk. Nevertheless, children were our main goal. They got many good emotions, they heard about Christ and visited God’s church. In my opinion, the main aims of this trip were reached. Praise God!
This month we visited Rudensk orphanage each week again. Almost all the month we and the children enjoyed bright and sunny weather and unusually nice autumn that God gave our country this month! Usually, when it is so good and warm outside the children like to spend time there. This month the children even had to decide between football or walking 
in the fresh air and our meetings in the classrooms. The majority of the children chose our meetings. We were very surprised and pleased that there came more boys because it was pretty difficult for them not to play football outside! A couple of new-comers began to attend our meetings too. I think it was not accidental that God brought them to our 
meetings because the problems we raised all October touch each person in this or that moment of life. We discussed with the children such topics as ‘Despondency’, ‘Pride’, ‘Craving for Revenge’ and during the boys’ and girls’ time we touched upon the problem of cohabitation.
This month I had a good opportunity to build closer relationship with Alesya. She is already 16. At first sight she seems to be a very simple and always smiling girl. But, as it turned out, her heart is full of wounds and worries, thus, her smile is often just a mask or a defense reaction. She shared that she had no friends at orphanage, that she had problems with study, that despite her age she read quite slowly and, therefore, she became the subject of mockery and indignity. Alesya said that sometimes she felt so de
sperate that she hadn’t even wanted to live. That’s why the topic ‘Despondency’ was especially important for her. To be honest, it was sometimes very hard to give some advice to Alesya in her situation so each time I listened to her I just asked God to give me wisdom how to communicate with her in a right way and help her. Then, we decided to look for nice things in our lives and we came to the conclusion that there’s always some good thing even in the worst moments. Alesya and I learnt to do that the whole month and during our last private talk Alesya 
could name me many advantages she found in her life. There are some of them: ;I’ve got hands, feet, eyes and ears’, ‘although I’m an orphan but I’m not homeless, I have a place to live in, food and clothes’, even if I feel lonely among people there’s always God I can pray to and feel really better’. I think this is great progress for Alesya and God has already shown His care for her, despite the troubles she faces so often. Glory to God!
Pride and craving for revenge are the things the children face each day. With the help of the Bible we tried to show how Jesus acted in this or that situation. The bright example was the story
about Jesus washing the feet of His disciples. We also tried to teach the children not to crave for revenge but give it to God who sees people’s hearts.
The majority of the children dream about having good, healthy families and there are love, peace and mutual understanding in them. But, unfortunately, the modern world teaches to live together before getting married with any obligations, that’
s why cohabitation is so widespread today. We did our best to show them that God values a family very much and tell them why He made a marriage. We also said that Satan tries to destroy families and do all that in his power for infants to be born outside the marriage, so their parents don’t want to take responsibility for each other and for their children. The children actively gave such examples concerning their families, where cohabitation was quite widespread. Now we can just pray so the children will not follow their parents’ mistakes and they will have normal, healthy families! May God bless all our children in this!
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 