LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Greetings everyone! We have conducted a camp for the orphans from June 10 to June 20, 2019 in Belinichy orphanage. Glory to God! We would like to share joyous stories and estimonies from this camp.The official statistics of Belarus tells us that only 2% to 5% of children that graduate from the government orphanages get educated, have a family and become good citizens. When we work with these children in the orphanages we are able to change this statistics. When we work in the orphanages we teach children Biblical truths, we teach them how to take care of themselves and others, we help them to develop their abilities and gifts, we teach them how to properly build relationships. Together with God we are changing the statistics: in the orphanages that we work, later on 20-30% of orphans become good citizens. Glory to God!

When we planned the camp, we decided to split all children into two groups – younger and older, so we would have age appropriate activities for each group in which children would be able to participate and which would be most interesting for the children. But the theme of camp was the same for both groups – “The Purpose driven Life”. As the result of many years of our work in the orphanages we have discovered that orphans in the orphanages very often have very damaged will, very damaged will to live and very damaged desire to achieve anything. We believe that this is the results of many traumatic experiences in their lives and the lack of love and care.

At the camp we have conducted interesting and exciting games that help children to be united into one family. In those games everyone was able to see his strong and weak sides and not be afraid to be judged by others but to accept himself the way he is. In addition we had access to the swimming pool and were able to train children to swim. A teenager named Roma (he is 17 years old) could not hold down his emotions by every evening before sleep he thanked God that Lord Himself had teached him how to swim through one of our volunteers – Gregory. The reason is it was Roma’s dream to learn how to swim. During the camp many children have learned how to swim and had lots of joyous emotions while playing in the swimming pool.

Also we had different craft lessons at our camp. Children were able to create crafts with their hands and choose a type of craft that was most interesting for them. Later on some choose to make some crafts as a hobby.

The main goal of the camp was the spiritual one – to tell children about God and help them to know Him personally as The Father and to learn how to build a relationship with Him. Therefore every day we had Biblical lessons (for the younger children in the morning and for the older children in the evening). In addition to the Biblical lessons we had theatrical plays to demonstrate what we are trying to say to help children better understand what we are saying to them.  After one of the lessons the boy named Vanya came to me and said that for the first time in his life he is feeling what it is to be loved because this love was expressed toward him by us not just in words but also in deeds, he said: “When you forgive you do not remember anymore. I was being disobedient but you were hugging me and telling me the good words”.

As the camp was going on the older kids started to gathering together in groups for prayer and we saw in them huge hunger for God and His word. At the evening lessons the children started to come with Bibles and notebooks so they would be able to write down what was important to them from what we said.

Another story from the camp: one of the older boys named Gena had developed a rash and nothing was helping to heal him. Then he asked for a prayer and together we prayed for his healing. Early next morning he was already witnessing about his miraculous healing! This healing have become a real prove of God’s miraculous power to everyone in the camp!

Another powerful story of the camp was active participating in Biblical lessons by the government teachers of the orp

hanage! Before this camp the government teachers were opposing The Gospel of Jesus Christ. But at this camp God so touched their hearts that they started to participate in the Bible lessons! They started to testify that they understood what we were saying and that their thinking, their understanding of the world is starting to change! They started to open their hearts to God! They started to sing songs of praise with us and repeat with us the words of prayers! In this camp we saw that the harvest is ready and you with us, everyone of us is a working on this field. More than 40 children consciously made a decision to follow Jesus Christ and prayed with a prayer of repentance!

Our thanksgiving to The Lord for His Presence in every day, His Reality and salvation of these kids! And also our thanksgiving to everyone who took part in this camp to make it happen so The God’s Kingdom was able to increase with these new precious souls!!!