LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Hello everyone! We are so glad that God has opened Vileika orphan boarding school for visiting! For more than six months we could not attend school because of the coronavirus. But, thank God, this month we were able to travel and build relationships with the guys and school administration again!

We came to the school again in early December. A lot of guys didn’t remember us and it was very sad. Nevertheless, we gathered all the guys in the event hall and tried to remind them who we are. The first topic for discussion was: “Time to dream.” Many guys told me that they don’t know how to dream. The fact that the guys were extremely open and actively involved in our conversation surprised me. The housemasters of the orphanage were present during that discussion, as they informed us later, and also were thinking about their dreams. For the first time I could see housemasters of the orphanage who are not distracted during discussion. Now they really listened to the topic and tried to discuss it with us. Thank god! The next time we visited the children they were already waiting for us. It was so nice to see how the guys ran out to meet us and everyone wanted to tell us about something that had happened to them recently! At this meeting we talked about the importance of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a problem for many children who live in orphanages and orphan boarding school. We know that unforgiveness destroys lives and breaks destinies. This is what we also found out at the first meeting when the guys talked about themselves and about their loved ones. One expression sounded like this: “I will never forgive!” Our team realized that the topic of forgiveness is important more than ever! Our meeting began and we talked about the petition and about forgiveness and unforgiveness and what God says about it. We tried to explain that forgiveness is a process and there was much debate about that during the meeting. We ended up saying that if forgiveness is very difficult for you then ask Jesus to be the one who forgive your offenders on your behalf and the ice began melting! Unforgiveness has lived in children`s hearts for years and now freedom came. Also, on the eve of the Christmas holidays we talked about Christmas. We reminded them of the purpose of Jesus coming and now they can be at peace with God through Jesus. The guys have so much wrong stereotypes about the Christmas in their heads so we had to make a lot of efforts to clear it all up for them. A lot of children thought that Santa Claus is Jesus! And some of the guys even said that Santa Claus and Jesus are relatives. Someone said that Jesus is a superhero. We realized that a lot of new guys who have not been present in our meetings have a lot of false conceptions about God. We told them biblical story of Christmas. About the angel who came to Mary and about Jesus supernatural birth and what He experienced in first hours of His human life. We told them that the Son of God wasn’t given any room to stay so He was born in a stable and laid on a straw. The shepherds came first to worship God and the only thing they could give to Him was their hearts. When the meeting came to an end many children from the sixth grade asked for a children’s bible. “We want to know more about God, give us bibles for Christmas.” Oh, it was so pleasant to hear! When we were driving back to home all of us were glad that none of the children asked for toys or phones, they asked for bibles instead! We are so glad that the boarding trips have resumed. So many children need the joyful news about God’s love to each of them. Thank you so much for your prayers for us! We believe that joint service to the children will glorify our God even in a greater measure!