Greetings, brothers and sisters. I am very grateful to God for the November trips to Smilovichi, as well as 
for the opportunity to serve Him and the children
from the orphanage and tell them about the good news!
In last month’s report we wrote that 4 new children from the same family arrived at the orhanage. These are 10-year-old Miroslav (big brother to his 3 sisters), 7-year-old Alisa, 5-year-old Yana and little Darinka, she is 3 years old. We are very glad that we were able to make friends with these children and find an approach to them. God bless!
Arseniy and Ksyusha left the orphanage. That trip was quite emotional for me because Ksyusha is the only child who has been in the orphanage since I first came to Smilovichi to serve orphans and that’s when I met her. Throughout the entire time she tried to listen and remember what we talked about in Bible lessons and she also answered questions well, which we are very happy about. Just like Arseniy, he actively responded in class and was happy to spend time with us. We ask you to pray for these children, that the word they heard will remain in their hearts.
In November, we discussed several serious topics with the older guys, one of them was “Revenge.” Unfortunately, orphans are treated with disdain and are often abused. I thought a good reminder for kids on this topic was the bible verse that says God is the Father of the orphans. And parents will always stand up for their children if they are offended. Therefore, we should not avenge ourselves because we have an impartial God who knows the hearts and intentions of every person on this earth.
Also next time we talked about the topic of Suicide and God’s relationship to human life. About the fact that He is very sensitive to His creation, about the fact that God created every cell of our body with special love, as it is written in the Psalms. Regarding the deprivation of life (suicide), we said that suicide is not a way out to solve some of our problems, but on the contrary, that it is a path to hell and the devil always rejoices if a person chooses this path because his main goal is to destroy, but if we choose life with God, then we have a way out of any situation, even the most difficult one.
During the Bible lessons with older children, there were held some lessons with younger children as well, during which we began to tell them biblical stories, such as “The Creation of the World”, “The Fall,” and the story of Cain and Abel. During lessons, we used visual materials to make it easier for children to understand and remember the story. A big blessing for me was when the girls ran to meet us and immediately recited the Bible verse they had learned in the previous lesson.
Thank God for this month. Blessings to you, dear readers!
first thing I want to note is that before our arrival, the guys wait for us on the street every Wednesday. Despite the frost and snow, each of the older children is looking forward to seeing
us and help with the bags. As one of the guys said, I like this time, that we can help you to carry bags with equipment and most importantly, just talk to each other. When we went to the school this time, the children talked about how God helps them when they turn to Him. The guys also said that they like to sing Christian songs.
the slides and simplicity of explanation helped the children understand the main point, and even after the lesson, and later, while returning to the car, the children said: – I am a proud person. Other teenagers asked to pray for them, so that God would give them the strength to change and not offend others. The next topic was revenge. And for many children, if not all, this topic is relevant. One child said: “When it’s difficult for me to forgive, I begin to take revenge.” And we understand that there is pain, which can sometimes move children to cruelty and they 
start take revenge. Our goal was to show how revenge can destroy people’s lives, how lack of forgiveness leads to revenge. There were many questions, how to forgive your parents who left you? How to forgive a friend who betrayed you? All this shows an inability to adapt to difficult life circumstances. And speaking on this topic, we were able to give answers to all the concerns of teenagers. We see that even the children’s prayers were completely different this time. We believe that good seeds were sown. We believe that this is a process and in this process we all need prayer support. When we came for the third time, we talked about envy. We can immediately
say that many teenagers saw themselves in examples. The guys said that they often envy and often dream about what other people have. Often because of envy children admit that they took things without asking. We talked about 
the fact that there will always be consequences for such actions. We said that envy destroys people’s lives. Envy is like a growing snowball; if you don’t work with it, then life will be difficult and not easy. Dear friend, as you noticed, the topics we discussed this month were simple and relevant. Typically, parents help children overcome every stage of adulthood. But since these children do not have parents, we, as mentors, help them learn to overcome bad habits and already formed reactions. We are grateful to God for the opportunity to minister to these children and also to speak about God’s love this month. Thank you so much for your prayers and for your participation. May God bless you!
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 