LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Greetings, dear readers! April has come to an end and we thank God for our trips to the orphanage in Smilovichy. There were only a few trips this month because the children returned to their parents in mid-April. Thank God that the parents were able to correct their situation and all the children (Miroslav, Alisa, Yana, Darina) left the orphanage. Our team members were a little sad to say goodbye to the children, because they had been in the shelter for quite a long time (since autumn 2023), but we hope and believe that they will be better at home with their parents! We also hope that they will remember the good news about Jesus Christ that the children heard from us, and in due time it will bear fruit!

We are very pleased with how actively these children participated in the Bible lessons and how they answered questions with awareness and understanding throughout our meetings with them. We believe that all this was not done in vain! During the last meeting, we gave them a large Bible for children with pictures, we hope that Miroslav and his sisters will read it and tell their parents about it. All the trips in April were wonderful, we talked a lot, played, sang, and glorified God. The children were always very happy when we arrived.

Our Bible lessons with them were held in the form of communication. It seems to me that this way the children remember better what we talk about with them. We ask them questions during the conversation, so they are more interested and understand the Bible story/topic more clearly. This month we continued to look at the qualities of God: God is bread; God is light; God is love. In the first lesson, Nikita’s main idea was that we must seek God and read the Bible, since all the truths with which we can be satisfied are written there, and not just physical bread. In the lesson about light, Anya told the children that when there is darkness in our lives, we are scared, we don’t know how to act in different situations, we hit, stumble and fall, just like in a dark room, but when we believe in Jesus Christ, He becomes a light in our life and we are no longer so scared and we know what to do, also the Bible in our life is a flashlight, because with truths we can illuminate dark places. In the lesson about love, Sasha talked about how God loves them and He is always ready to accept us, no matter what we do (for example, the parable of the prodigal son) and that God took away our sins and gave us eternal life, which we did not deserved as a gift, and this is the most vivid proof of His love. Let’s pray for these children, so that the Lord will always be with them in due time, so that the parents will correct themselves and not return to their previous way of life. Blessings!