The month of May was special personally for me. Preparing the classes for children, you cannot but live through the things that you want to deliver to them; first of all, God was working in my heart. 
I was myself living through the stories about Daniel and his friends. And this is a special time of preparation and happiness that you can share something that God reveals with the children. Every kid who visits our meetings perceives our themes and those truths that we deliver to them in his or her own way. One of the things that I realized for sure 
is that we don’t know a kid’s heart, and it is only God who is making His work, and we can only be instruments in God’s hands. There are children, who at first sight are attentive and open, but after a while you can see how far they can be from God, 
and at the same time the most disturbing brawler turns out to be open to spiritual changes in life. That’s why when I see brawlers, who are merely trying to catch attention by their behavior, I rejoice that I can give at least a little of my love, attention and care to them.
This month with the elder children we were talking about Daniel and all his life. About Daniel being taken to slavery, about his loyalty and trust to God. The special Daniel’s gift is to read dreams. And to trust firmly to God despite the difficult trials in his life. The children like such stories, through them you can reach out and speak to their hearts.
It is well known that a person shows sympathy and readiness to help after a more close acquaintance with someone who needs help. We help our nearest because we know them well and love them, and usually don’t take closely to our hearts a message about hundreds of life being taken by a storm somewhere over the ocean. 
The issue with orphans is the same. Although we know that a lot of children in Belarus still live in orphanages, it doesn’t give us a possibility to feel deeply a state of a specific child. We do not see these children, and our motivation to help them is very low.
It makes a big difference when we see a photo, story and video about some particular child. We discover more about him and get a wish to help. Someone will have this wish materialized into specific actions – adoption or creation of a foster family. At our turn we want to help delivering the Gospel to them and givie a little love and care during our meetings.
Archive for May, 2018
In May we enjoyed warm days and the children from Vileika school were happy because of coming holidays. That is why our meetings were in a good and 
vivid atmosphere and with feeling of expectation of a three-month celebration. In this report we collected interviews taken from some of our volunteers. Enjoy the results.
Olya Yarmolchik:
“May is the last month before holidays. God gave us unexpectedly warm May this year and the children had more sunshine so as more outdoor games and more smiles.
Lyonka loves playing football so he listened to the story of Jorginho, a famous football player, who believes in God, very attentively. He had a hard life from his childhood, but he did his best to achieve his goal and became an excellent football player. However, the main idea was that God touched his heart and changed his life, his relationships with his relatives and friends.
Such stories encourage the teenagers, give them an example how to aim their efforts at making their dreams true, and enable them with the hope that God will not give them up.
We blessed the children and their summer and hope that God would allow us to continue our relationships with them”.
Vlada:
“Our last visits in May were special for me because of many reasons. Firstly,
I made friends with the team, knew everyone better, learned a lot from each of them during the whole year of working together and I am so grateful for this! Secondly, we became closer to the children. They became so dear to me and I hope this is mutual. I think that due to this they could be open and trust me as their friend. We had serious private talks with some of them and they were very open, asked questions and shared the deepest wishes of their hearts. Of course, they didn’t say everything and didn’t share many things but I believe that the time will come and God himself will incline their hearts to be more and more open) I think this year was fruitful and I hope we will do more next year if God allows!”
Katya Shvedova:
“One day we had some talk with one of the teachers of the orphanage about graduates and we found out that they just get diplomas on the last day of their staying there. The orphanage cannot allow such an obvious thing for graduates as a photo album because of lack of finance and technical possibilities. That is why our suggestion to solve this problem was accepted with great encouragement and gratefulness.
On May 18 three people from our team came there to take pictures. Beforehand, we made a special chat in the social network for preparing and discussing with the graduates how and where all this would take place. 
However, unfortunately, there was a heavy rain on that day and we had to change our plan. We were allowed to take pictures in the last two lessons. First, we took the pictures of the whole class at the desks and then the teenagers wanted to have photos with their first teacher and we went to that classroom. Then we made individual portraits for everyone and made group photos of close friends.
After lunch, not everyone came back because some boys were shy. So, we took some funny pictures of the rest outside. They jumped, photographed with the local dog and even with the director who was passing by.
During this time, the junior pupils ran to us with one important question: “will you do the same when we graduate?” When we finished we had tea with the director and his deputy.
In that chat in the social network, we continue to discuss with the graduates different topics. When we prepared all the photos for the album, they sent us more than 30 photos from the farewell bell and asked to put them on the album and we did it because it was important for them. All the children are looking forward to having their albums and we are eager to see them because this is our first work. Although we are not professionals, we did it with all our heart and love and left a good testimony for the children and the administration”.
Vika Volkovich:
“I would like to tell more about Katya. She is a very unusual girl, cleverer than her peers. She reads the Bible but at the same time she prays for us not to come here. The teenagers very often attract our attention by speaking about suicides but generally, all the children are open and sociable, especially smaller ones, but all of them lack love”.
The meetings at the orphanage of 2017/2018 finished. This year was truly friendly, generous and joyful. Graduation assembly is coming. Our whole team are planning to organize a nice picnic for the teenagers. They are on the threshold of after orphanage life, so they need serious support and good friends. Thanks God for His help and influence!
School year is nearly over in our country, so is our ministry for the season. In a month we again will say goodbye
to graduates from orphanages, who’ll go to study to different towns. We’ll see those who’ll stay in the 
orphanage only in September. Perhaps, this is the reason why older kids try to spend more time with our team and long for one to one conversations. It’s usually hard to gather kids in May, 
so there are less of them at our meetings, kids just get outside to enjoy the long-awaited warmth. This year, though, is different, children try to not miss our meetings and even bring friends with them! 
Older students got to know new biblical characters – Daniel and his friends. There was an end of month meeting and kids remembered Daniel’s story. Moreover this month we had visits to Rudensk – we had meetings for boys and girls separately, where they discussed how to become a happy wife from biblical point of view, and boys talked about their dreams and the ways to make them come true. Younger kids continued getting to know
new stories from New Testament. They learned about a parable 
of the prodigal son, kind samarian, good Pastor and a lost sheep, about tax collector and pharisees’ prayer. They also had a meeting where I was delighted to see that kids not only remembered biblical stories they heard that month, but also many other stories they heard through out the year. We know, it’s God Who is doing His work in kinds hearts, and we are really grateful to Him for that!
Children are always happy to see us.
It happens that the relationship in the orphanage between the children is very complicated. Because many 
of them want at least somehow to be above the rest, and the more so, no one likes when they are humiliated. Maybe this is not noticeable at the first acquaintance with the children, but sometimes, 
when you often communicate with them, you can see how secretly they “show where your place”, if someone tried to do what they couldn’t.
To some extent, our visits are a distraction from finding out the relationship between each other and the opportunity to see another world – a world full of love and grace. On our meetings you can be one team for an hour, without resenting each other.
Interesting biblical stories can help us to become a team.
This month, the children listened to stories about Joseph. For a few weeks the children was listening stories, and, with the help of pictures, became participants in the events that were in the life of Joseph. They faced the dislike that Joseph felt, with the betrayal of the brothers, tired to feel the emotions of Joseph, who were sold into slavery. We learned what Patifar’s wife made to Joseph, how he was feeling in prison, and how he became the second after Pharaoh.
But the most important thing is that the children listened that Joseph trusted God in all his difficulties. We listened to how he evaluated his actions not only with moral criteria, but also with God’s criteria. This allowed Joseph to live a life with God. And we told this to the children.
In addition, this month we had a meeting in which children made crafts with their own hands, which were useful for them (the guys did photo frames), and well-remembered about our meetings.
Thanks to everyone who is interested in our service, and thanks to all who support us!
This month has been especially bright as we had a wonderful opportunity to tell children about Easter – the celebration day of 
Jesus Christ’s resurrection.
In the beginning of the month we held separate classes dedicated to the Easter with the senior and junior children. We were telling them about the great deed of the Son o
f God, and about the price He paid to bring salvation to the world. Most of the children already heard from us about the core of Easter last year. But now there are some new kids in the Belynichi orphanage for whom this information was unknown: most of them associated Easter with colored eggs and various bakery. We hope that from now on they will remember about Jesus Christ, who suffered at Calvary for each of us!
During next meeting we held another Easter program with participation of a jolly clown, who was not only amusing the kids, but also was telling them about Christ’s Resurrection. At the end everyone got his long-anticipated gift.
Besides the festive events, the elder kids continued their acquaint
ance with new heroes of the Bible, such as Naaman and wise queen Esther. The example of each of these characters shows how strongly the faith in God influences the people’s fates. We hope that our dear children also visit our meetings not in vain, and that the word that they hear would penetrate deep in their hearts!
To the younger kids we told about the kind shepherd who went to find his lost sheep. With the help of this character we managed to show the little children that they also have the Shepherd and Father, Who never leaves them, even if their blood father or mother left them.
In these latter days the children meet us very cheerfully and warm – like long-expected and beloved guests. All the barriers in communication have disappeared. The changes are seen also in the teachers who became more open and friendly (it was not like that at all in the beginning).
During the latest meeting the kids were amazed by the Easter gifts – they were running to each of us, telling their gratitude with all the sincerity of their hearts. Someone happened to receive a car, someone received some finery – everyone got something of his own, unique, unexpected, as a real miracle. An that is what we all happen to need in life badly – a simple miracle of love, acceptance and friendship, realization of a simple truth: this world needs you.
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 