LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Hello to you, brothers and sisters!

This month we’ve had five trips to the Belynichi orphanage. Belynichi is the furthest place where the team that serves the orphans goes. This month many children have come back to the school from the hospital. We could see how the orphanage got filled with more children, and more of them started to attend our meetings. Gena was in the hospital for more than three weeks. He has a skin disease. When we met with him, he said he had missed all our team and the school. He asked God to help him come back to school as soon as possible. ‘Thanks to God, I am home!’ Gena said. I thought it was great that the children were praying outside the school building! This month we have talked about grumbling. We forget about the blessings that we have so quickly! Talking about this problem, we took the example of Moses and told the children about the consequences that the people of Israel had because of their resentment. We tried to connect this story with our lives. The people of Israel were dissatisfied with Moses and God. ‘And what about us?’ I asked. Children can very often be dissatisfied with their teachers, the food, or the room, in which they have to live. People need to be grateful but they often grumble and say bad words instead. As a result, it leads to bad consequences. The serpents bit the people in the story with Moses, but in our life, we will receive a bad attitude. People won’t love us and treat us very badly. In that case, we might not be allowed to get the education and get into nursing homes. Obedience and gratitude open hearts and give us opportunities that can change life for the better. We also talked about Esther. She was an orphan but God made her a queen. God left these stories as examples for us. We also mentioned low self-esteem and that when we are obedient to God and our teachers our life becomes ordered. Faith in God and spending time with Him through prayer can change our life as it was with Esther. Esther overcame her fears due to her faith in God. We can also overcome our fears, lack of confidence, and failures just by having our faith. It is faith that opens the doors to opportunities and gives confidence.

During one of our trips, we talked about Jonah, where we wanted to underline that God’s love covers everything. We, human beings, are picky. We love those who love us and hate those who don’t love us. But this story has shown us God’s heart and how much He wants that people will come to peace with Him. God leads Jonah through such trials and miracles to save the people of Nineveh. God loves us although we don’t choose Him, don’t believe in Him, and constantly make him upset. But God chose to love us, He chose all of us so nobody could perish! Despite his lack of love Jonah eventually fulfilled his mission and the whole nation was saved. The life of a person sometimes depends on the Gospel! We spoke with the children that each of us had to make the decision like the people of Nineveh did. Our future depends on this decision.

Simple lessons sow the seeds of faith in a heart. We are so glad that the children are interested in knowing about God and that they put into practice what they hear during our meetings. Also, the last Thursday we told them about the birth of Jesus Christ. The children watch a lot of different performances during the winter holidays but none of them tell about the real meaning of Christmas. We reminded the children what Christmas means to us. God created the world, then sin came into the world through Adam and Eve’s disobedience. After that, Cain killed Abel because of his jealousy. Sin had been spreading with great speed and God saw that people couldn’t be saved from this so He sent His Son Jesus Christ to Earth. Anyway, we see that when Jesus Christ was born, He didn’t have a place in any hotel or a house but only in the manger. Jesus reconciled people with God. I asked the children what there could have been if Jesus hadn’t been born and they answered: ‘We wouldn’t be able to be saved’. That was the correct answer! Christmas is a holiday of hope and reconciliation! We are so happy that we could serve the orphans in Belynichi this year! Thank you so much for praying for us and our children! Glory be to God that we can bring the Gospel to the place where it is needed so much!