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 31, 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!
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 