LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Greetings, brothers and sisters! At the beginning of this year we were very happy to find out that in the Smilovichi orphanage Maxim and Alesya, brother and sister, reunited with their family. It has been more than seven months since they were taken from their family for the first time in their lives and placed in a orphanage. Their mother raising her children turned out to be unable to provide for the children and they were taken to a orphanage for some period of time. At our very first meeting Maxim and Alesya were scared and they were very slow with developing a rapport with us. But after some time they felt safe, they began to smile and said they could play with you. That’s how our friendship began. God blessed the team and when we were sharing with our friends about Ales and Maxim many believers donated clothes and when the children were taken away by their mother, she was very surprised at amount of necessary things her children used to lack.

I remember our last Christmas evening with the guys, when we celebrated the Nativity of Jesus Christ. I talked about the meaning of this holiday, that God gave the world the greatest gift — His Son and on the birthday of Jesus we can ask God to answer our prayers and needs. The prayer of the guys was to return back home to their mothers. I can say for sure that for everyone it was a great testimony of how God answers prayers. Alesya amd Maxim are finally home and we praise God for the answer to a simple prayer: – God help mom to take us back home as quickly as possible. There are also other children in the orphanage and we talked with them about the importance of prayer and how God answers prayer. An example of our lesson was Anna. We told about Anna’s life. About Peninnah who often offended Anna. After that Dima asked: Do believers have problems? We say: yes, they do, but let’s see how the story ended. God gave Anna the baby she asked for so much. What does this mean for us? To ask even when no one believes, to believe God even when you don’t see answer yet. It can be difficult to believe till you get the answer, but how happy Anna was when God answered her prayer and how happy we will be when God answers ours.

Prayer is the key that sometimes opens closed doors. The next time we talked about Jonah, who was supposed to come to Nineveh. Jonah surprised the guys with his disobedience to God. Jonah was disobedient to God, just as we are sometimes — Polina said. In our life we often do not listen to God and do not act as He would like us to. We think we know more and we are smarter, but then we wonder why there are so many problems in our life. This story showed how much God loves the lost people of Nineveh, no one loved them because of their sins and only a loving God is trying his best to save them. After that story we were saying to guys that many people make mistakes when they try to hide from God, pretending that He simply does not exist. But in moments of rejection and despair God is near, He is here and He loves each of us. God also loves you! — I said. Vladik smiled he was pleased to hear it. We are very glad that God loves children who need parents and we see that God uses us to show His love to children. We were also glad to hear that Maxim and Alesya are doing well and they are talking to their mother about believers who talked about a loving God. Thank you for your prayers and for your support in serving orphans. Be blessed!