LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Greetings to you. God blesses that the doors are open to boarding schools and we are grateful to him that there is such an opportunity to serve in boarding schools. In March, in Rudensk, as in Smilovichi, we also passed stories about how: “Jesus heals 10 lepers.”, “A wonderful saturation of five thousand people with five loaves.” and “The Healing of Bartimaeus.” we tried to explain Scripture to children in a language accessible to them with examples from life and explain how these truths relate to their lives. Thank God that He brings children and they have a desire to attend our games and our lessons, usually about 15-20 children come. We are glad that we can make friends with children through communication and games, as well as sing songs together, but the most important thing for us is that they listen to the Word of God and answer our questions, through this we see that they learn something and understand, that the Word sounds to their hearts – it is very encouraging in the ministry. As in other boarding schools, we ask them a passage from the Bible so that they would read it and retell it to us when we come next time, we also teach a lesson on the same passage and this allows them to think twice more and understand the Word. I am very grateful to God that there are children who regularly read the passages that we ask them, for example, Petya and Polina, several other people have also recently started reading regularly.This is how we teach them to read the Bible on their own. I am also glad that the guys always meet us when we arrive and wait for us, they even go outside, far from the entrance of the boarding school to the parking lot to meet us as soon as we get out of the car.

Petya always opens us a classroom in which we can put things and take tables and chairs from there for games and for the lesson. I am also grateful to God that David and Anya joined the ministry and that the local church also began to take part, although it is small, but there are a couple of people there who can sometimes help and this is encouraging. Children often ask to pray for them, for example, Sasha, who in the 6th grade asked to pray for his parents so that they would stop drinking and take him away as soon as possible, and Polina from the 12th grade often asks to pray for her needs. After the lesson, we usually divide into groups so that there are about 4-5 children for the one believer and personally ask them “how to pray for you” and so we pray in such small groups. Children see that our faith is alive and that we are doing this for the sake of Jesus Christ. May God bless us to be a good witness for them and for all the staff of the boarding school, both for students and teachers.We are also grateful to God that we can help the children financially within our means, for example, Polina’s gums are bleeding and the doctor told her to buy a special toothpaste and a means for rinsing teeth. Petya asked simply to buy them 1 pack of sugar for the class and that their electric kettle was broken. Sometimes someone’s glasses break, and sometimes the guys just need to buy socks or sneakers. We decided to buy all this and help them at least in a small way. There is still a time ahead when we will have to pack things for graduates, so there will still be an opportunity to serve them.