LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Love to one’s blood children is an undeserved gift from God. To love someone else’s child is a fruit of a humble but strong spirit grown by the long-suffering and hope in Him. And God gives such love to the orphan children. Whatever it may sound like I am very happy that I can serve and love these small disobedient children who are in need of love.
Our trips to the Belynichy orphanage this month started with the Christmas performance in the end of which all kids received presents and surely were happy. During one of the first meetings with the smallest kids in the new 2017 year we decided to hold a small quiz over all the themes of the semester. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the kids are receiving and listening to our Bible lessons attentively, they were answering all our questions perfectly. We are discussing themes on the Old Testament with the smallest children, during one of the first meetings we had the theme “the histoy of Isaac, blessing of sons”. God gives us happiness of having family, saves us from loneliness, and presents us with wonderful children for whose sake we are ready to do anything. But precisely such God’s family full of joy and peace is a wonderful, the only unique place to warm, heal, strengthen and let all the abandoned, left alone, betrayed and condemned to loneliness  into this world. We know a lot about love and Christian principles, but every time I come to the orphanage to these kids I ask myself a question – can I love and give my love to children indeed?  I mean I count myself full of Christian love. And where is the love when I need to cocker, smother with kisses this thorny cold clot, who experienced no tenderness and care, for whom it is so hard to believe that love actually exists. Will I have enough strengths, patience and wisdom to prove true love despite impudence and disobedience? I am learning this very kind of love during every meeting with the kids.
We had one more meeting with the theme “The History of Joseph” “The betrayal of brothers”. Family is the first small world to which each of us comes. Only after growing up and getting strong in it, having learnt the main and basic lessons and rules can a man with bravery and strength step into the big world full of dangers and impendences, tasks and trials. Can we tear the family out of our lives? Can we fill its place with anything else? And our country alone has tens of thousands children who turned out to be in this emptiness. Tens of thousands orphans…

Hello, brothers and sisters in Christ and just readers. We wish you merry Christmas and we hope that God’s care and friendship could be real in your life!
In this month we visited several boarding schools of our country. Especially I want to share with you how we visited Belynichi. Despite frosts, snow and ice, our team left on meetings with children. We believe that each meeting is unique and everything that we do there, leaves a deep imprint in the lives of children and tutors.
The discontent and grumble surround us everywhere, and it gets into boarding schools. “I am an orphan and I have the right to show discontent to bad food, to things, to people around”. But the Bible shows that the discontent and grumble destroy the person from inside and influence his relations with surrounding people. Children share what occurs in their lives, forgetting about from what families they have taken. Abject poverty which was expressed not just in bad conditions, sometimes life-endangering, but also constant shortage of love and attention from parents. Some children remember how they wear out the same clothes for many years. Not days, but years! Even in spite of the fact that now their situation has changed to the best: clean clothes fitted in size, good food and summer holiday in Italy and other countries, all the same children continue to show discontent.
Using foul language became normal among children as they imitate adults. But children do not understand that they damn not other person, but themselves.
It is very difficult to orphan children to get rid of a habit to use foul language and to show discontent, but we believe that God is strong to make it. That’s why we are encouraged to lift such subjects. We believe that God is strong to give freedom to any person if that actually wants to reconcile with Him!

Here we are at the end of another month of service in the Belynichi orphanage. Despite of some obstacles all our meetings were held and each of them was filled with its special atmosphere. We have already built up good relationships with the majority of children who visit our meetings, but with some of them we still have a way to go. That is why during Christmas holidays we want to organize a winter camp for these children! Now we offer everyone who is not indifferent to the destiny of these kids to pray for the camp to take place and to become a real blessing both for the children and for their mentors! The camp will be organized in December, and now I would like to say some words about our meetings in November.
With the elder children we finished a series of meetings dedicated to friendship. From my point of view this theme was rather relevant for the kids of this orphanage as it is very difficult for them to build relationships with people. But at the same time each of them wants to have loyal, loving and safe friends. And in our turn we wanted to teach them not only to expect this traits from their friends but also to exercise them themselves. We brought up such topics as: “Loneliness in friendship”, “Not like all the others” and also “Value of friendship”. We closed up this month watching a movie which also told much about friendship, people’s relationships, sports and motivation.
In the beginning of the month during one of our visits to the younger kids, they met us being very happy and were all screaming “…and we know what happened after the creation of the world!” And they all started to tell – interrupting each other – about Adam and Eve, Kain and Abel. I was surprised to hear that from them as we had recently started to learn the Old Testament with them and until this year we only used to tell them stories about such heroes as David and others. Later I found out that the kids asked the teacher to read for them the Bible for children. That is why they were already prepared for our meeting. I was amazed by the fact that the teacher read the Bible for them, and I was surprised and happy for teachers’ good attitude to our classes with kids. I would also like to say some words about the behavior of the children. I see crucial changes during this year.
It is seen from the way they diligently arrange chairs before the classes, from the way they place themselves and loudly try to calm one another down. From the beginning of November we started to hold such themes as “Creation of the World”, “ the Fall of Adam and Eve”, “Kain and Abel”, “Noah and the Flood” and we will continue with the Old Testament. The kids try to behave themselves during the classes. One can see from their eyes how interested they are while listening; they love to participate in the course of a lesson and answer the questions trying to outdo each other. It means that they understand and catch on the information. They know very well how to behave themselves, what sin and evil is, but at the same time they can push one another and only afterwards remember that this is wrong and try to apologize. After that, they can push or call names again, but I am telling this as I see changes here too. Formerly I saw that after doing harm they would just laugh, and now they understand that it is bad and try to change. It is very heartwarming to see each small victory and change in children’s behavior.

In this letter I’d like to tell you about our meetings with orphans in Belinichy. Remember, we go to them from Minsk, and that’s 150 km one way. Every trip is different from the previous one.

This month we’ve seen some graduates and some of them are already working. When they were in the orphanage they were dreaming about leaving it. Many of them said : “Finally we are free! We are grown-ups, we know everything, we understand everything!” But now, after only one month of that freedom, they are so eager to come back and see their carers, their friends who are still in the orphanage, our team. They’ve seen that nobody needs them outside the orphanage.Unfortunately, that is a sad reality. I think, those people who live in families, always had parent’s support, as well as from relatives. But those who leave orphanage very seldom have any relatives who are interested in them. Moreover, they often face rejection from people of their age who lived in good families. These teenagers often end up in bad companies, start drinking and taking drugs. That’s why during our ministry we try to prepare children for what is waiting for them outside the orphanage. We try to show them that the real life is much different from what they have imagined as “freedom”.

During this month teenagers who left school were visiting the orphanage, and they sat together with those kids are going to finish school soon. Only now they were listening with such hunger and they also had some thoughts to share about this “fake freedom”.

The youngest kids got to know such topics as : Creation of the World, How sin entered this world, Noah’s ark. These kids are very hyper and active here. They love singing,playing, and watching cartoons, even though they have health problems. We want them not only to have fun, we want them to understand and accept biblical truth, we want them to feel how important they are to God!

13 November is the World Prayer Day for orphans! All christians around the world are going to pray in one voice for these kids. Join us!

So here we come again starting our ministry for orphans! So many positive emotions, happy smiles on children’s faces and the desire to share with you what we’ve done during the summer. That’s how we can describe September!
At the moment there are more little kids in Belynichie boarding-school. There are lots of new kids who we already got to know. We decided to divide them in 3 groups because their knowledge and the development is different. We hope that it will help to get to know more kids and there will be more chances to build strong relationships with them.
We’ve already done bible lessons based on stories from Old Testament in groups with the little ones. Creation of the world, the sin of Adam and Eve, story about Cain and Abel and of course – Noah’s arch. May be it seems that these are very simple examples, but they show how great and powerful our God is!
Older children have “the month of friendship” right now. We’ve chosen a friendship topic for our meetings with them. This topic is of current interest for secondary school students. Unfortunately, many of the children that age picture this term incorrectly. So we talked about faithfulness in friendship, showing love in friendship and why we need friends. At one of the meeting we did a lot of sport’s activities so that little kids could participate as well. It was great to see that children now accept not only their successes , but also their defeats! Both teams got consolation prizes at the end of competitions.
It is also amazing to feel how children trust you and at the end of every meeting they look for a chance to talk to you one to one, to tell you about their thoughts and worries, disappointments, and sometimes big and small joys.
When we come home after a regular visit we feel physically exhausted but at the same time we are so delighted that we spent such a great time with children! Praise God for such an amazing time!