LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

This month I could communicate with both small and older children from the Rudensk orphanage. I am always very pleased with the hospitality of the children, as well as the teachers and the orphanage administration! Each meeting is filled with a warm atmosphere, good smiles and acceptance.
The older children have finished acquaintance with the stories about the life of David and his son Solomon. In addition, the older children had a “boy’s party” and a “girl’s party”. These are the favorite meetings of the children from Rudensk, when the girls gather separately from the boys. The girls talked about chastity, how important it is to value and respect yourself and keep clean. We had the opportunity to show the girls of how God sees a chastity. We have talked about the value of the family in the eyes of God. Each girl shared her ideas about a strong and healthy family. At the end of the meeting, We have prayed that God would help each of them keep themselves clean, and also that in the future they will have good families and their children will never learned what life in an orphanage is.
The Boys have talked about the fears that men can have. At the beginning of the meeting, the boys pretended that they are very brave and do not know what the fear is. But when the themes of parents began, about relationships, about nightmares, children began to recognize their own fears. We talked about how fear can influence our behavior. But, besides that we told about the fear, we gave to the children a tool, how to fight a fear. We told about a psalmist who says that he was looking for the Lord, and He delivered him from all fears. And it was a good encouragement for the boys, because they can do the same as this psalmist.
In addition to general meetings, we held relay races, which are very popular with high school students. And at the end of the month, a funny clown came to the orphanage, who not only entertained and amused the children, but also told them about God. After the meeting with the clown, all the children and teachers got sweet prizes and sports balls.

I greet you, brothers, sisters and all friends who are interested in helping orphans! Belarus is definitely a country of opportunities, but, at the same time, many people do not know God. Problems people face, show that they lack close relationships with their Creator. Broken families result in appearance of social orphans. And this is a huge problem! The whole generation of children are growing up without fathers and mothers in our country. What does it mean? It means children have low self-esteem and adults are emotionally depressed, besides, they feel worthless and insignificant! That is why our country is on the list of countries with the highest level of suicide. People need changes but they cannot occur without changing of minds and coming to faith in God.
Rudensk orphanage is the place where children’s life stories really change. Today’s generation counts on Marvel heroes who cannot answer the main question – what can help me in my life and what can change it! Children need parents, moreover, they need right heroes who could help them believe in him or herself, in their personal value and believe that real changes can come true! David is a Bible character who turned over the whole epoch of disbelief, disappointment, betrayal and pain. Although hundreds and thousands of years went on from that time, the image of this hero still helps young orphans get right understanding of following God. Responsibility for the flock of sheep which was in his charge during his adolescence, his relationships with God, his wisdom, bravery, friendship, faithfulness to his views and many other things can be added to the list of his good qualities. God, looking at his heart, helped him reach the position of a king from being a slave. But such a status didn’t prevent him from being faithful to God.
When we came to the children in February, we told them about David’s life and reflected on the actuality of his example in our days. I am happy when the teenagers ask questions and think over of what they heard at our meetings. But most of all I am excited by their wish to change. The teenagers come closer to their dream with every prayer and our visits. The Bible becomes a life guidebook for those who are eager to know more about God. I think, in this month, despite cold weather, offence, price increase, cruelty, offence, failures, the children learnt how to see not only bad things in everything and look for the way out even in hard situations and make right conclusions. God is interested in their lives. Changes can come only due to closeness to God. Evaluating the work of the team, I see that we change together with the children. God transforms us and, as a result , the message we share influence the children’s destiny and eternal life!
I want to thank all who read our news! Without you and your prayers, it would be harder to see changes that God implements.

The brightest and the most exciting event of this month for the children in Rudensk orphanage became Christmas performance! The program was very fascinating and spectacular but the best thing about it is that the children could hear and see the real sense of Christ’s birth through the characters on stage once again. At the end of the performance, every child got a long-awaited Christmas present. Every year we share how programs and performances went on in different orphanages and how the children enjoyed presents. At first sight, it may seem usual and habitual. However, in reality every year each child manages to give us new impressions in a special way! It is impossible to express how joyful children’s faces are when they get presents even if they take a small and simple toy out of the box. Shining eyes, a big and sincere smile and words of gratitude from the children are the reasons for giving thanks to our Heavenly Father! We are grateful to God for this wonderful time!
All further meetings at the orphanage went through in a familiar way both for us and for the children. In spite of this, these meetings were marked by friendly atmosphere, Christmas recollections and the children’s stories about their presents. The older ones managed to be acquainted with some biblical stories from the Old Testament: ‘The story of Samson’, ‘The story of Ruth’ and ‘The story of Hannah and Samuel’. When we spoke about Samson, we gave them possibility to compete and play tug-of-war as a vivid illustration of the story. When we introduced Ruth to them, everyone had an opportunity to take roles of some of the characters in the story. The example of Hannah and Samuel shows how God answers the prayers and how it is important to be faithful to the promise you give to God.
The younger ones began to learn the story of Jesus Christ this month. They have already known about Christ’s birth, the family He was brought up in and who his earthly father Joseph was. Besides, they could know about Jesus’ disciples.
One of the vivid moments of this month became the talk with one of the girls from the younger group. Her name is Alina. We spoke about friendship. Alina shared what she thought about qualities of a real friend and noticed that she wasn’t always a good and faithful friend herself. But I cheered most of all when she said that she wanted to have friendship as David and Jonathan’s. Such words surprised and encouraged me at one and the same moment because we had shared this story in October! It is surprising that a small girl with mental and physical problems learned this lesson so well and could even make practical conclusions. Praise the Lord!
Thanks to everyone who supports us and is not indifferent to the service to orphans of our country!

We continue visiting kids and sharing Good News and everything that we have, as everyone in the team has special gifts and talents. During the whole month older kids were learning about Moses. We talked about his dedication to God and to people. That was a topic very close to their hearts, as everyday they moan and groan complaining about their lives, circumstances, people, everything and everyone around them. Some of the kids don’t want to make any effort to change for the better, they just live in “today”, accepting everything as it is. The story about Moses and Israel people made them think about their calling in their lives and what to do to draw closer to the Lord and have relationships with Him. It made them think about things they can be grateful for and about their talents and gifts which they can develop and use for others.
We learnt new songs with younger kids and they become calm and quiet while singing, God’s peace filled their hearts. Every meeting we had a different bible story for them, like a story about Naaman, Esther and, as we were approaching Christmas, a story about the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. We were building episodes of Christmas story using tangible blocks, so now Christmas won’t be associated with Santa and gifts under the Christmas tree! Now kids now for sure that Christmas is the birth of our Savior! It is so great to see kids contemplating on God’s words, and their eyes filled with faith and love! The power of God’s love and truth is changing children’s lives forever.
Next month we are planning to organise a Christmas play for kids from Rudensk boarding school, it will reveal the meaning of a Christmas story to kids even deeper. Every child will get a present after the play. I love this time very much because I love seeing kids happy.

We did not know many of the children who started visiting our meetings in September, but they have already become so close and dear to us. Every one of them has his story, pain, worries, dreams, gifts, as well as victories and loses. The one thing that unites them is that they are all orphans. They never saw warm and healthy relationship in a family. Of course, we cannot replace parents or give them love and care to the extent that it is needed from the parents whom they lost in their childhood. Nevertheless, we are trying our best to do everything so that they will not get completely disappointed with people and with God, Who truly loves them, and who is the only One, who can give that love to orphans. Love, that is greater than the love of a mother.
Older children met a new biblical character this month called Moses. For many of them Moses’ life is an example of many victories, which God can make through a person. Many of the kids, just like Moses, are afraid of public speaking or in general of just being in public eye and they consider themselves useless. However, we believe God can make them victorious, they can become professionals at work, good parents and good friends, if they open their hearts to Him! Children form Rudensk orphanage love singing that is why we sing with them even more than with kids from other orphanages.
One day we organized a sport event for them. Both girls and boys enjoy doing sports in this orphanage. School administration provides every opportunity for the children to participate in different competitions with other schools and kids do bring victories and prizes. It is great to see that children have opportunities to show how gifted they are in sport! From our side, we try to organize from time to time sport events with older kids, too. It is a special time for us when we see children’s characters and how they win and are able to accept loses!
Younger kids have a separate program: creative classes, Christian animated cartoon movies, bible lessons where they get to know bible characters. This month they had learnt about Daniel and his friends, as well as about Jonah, who was swallowed by the whale. Sometimes it seems that children do not always listen to us and actually hear us due to being too emotional and active, but when ask for a feedback, we are amazed every time how well they remember the bible story we talked about! Praise God for that! We also have another good news. There is a new person, a musician, in the team who works with younger kids in Rudensk. His name is Sergey and he plays the guitar. So now, our younger kids are very excited about it! Sergey is also a big blessing for the boys. There used to be only girls in our team who worked with younger kids there. Boys needed someone who they could look up to, an example for them. Thanks be to God for His love and care!