LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

February is the month of changes! Thank you if you pray for the ministry for orphans in our country! The main progress is that after a period of time we are allowed to work with little kids again. We had this issue for a few years. It was okay to visit older kids and teenagers, but not allowed to see little kids. We had problems in preparing a program for this ministry. When graduates were leaving school, little kids were getting older and started to come to our meetings. We were happy to meet them, but those kids didn’t know a thing about God and His Word. We prayed a lot about getting a permission to see little kids.
And God heard our prayers! Now we can work with these kids and moreover teachers and mentors themselves are eager to help us in any way.
Children are quite clever and witty, even though they had different diagnoses. They are good at remembering Bible stories and when we come next time, they can recall the stories from previous meetings. This month they have heard about the creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Arch.
We continue the ministry with teenagers too. One of the urgent problems is early pregnancy and falling in love, as boys and girls often confuse what real love and falling in love are. We can already see the consequences of that: the girls who have recently finished school are already pregnant from those who had just played with them and now left them alone. Hatred, blaming, scoffing – a whole bunch of things were awaiting them. That is why we talked about it a lot this month. We said that every decision also starts with a thought about how important it is to stop on time. We also talked about how important it is to appreciate those people, who try to teach us something and in general appreciate everything that we have today.
We continue to pray that our ministry will go on and will influence the lives of orphans. We pray that orphans will not give life to new orphans, but instead that their kids will grow in healthy families. It all starts from school! Praise be to god that His Word is being spread and bears fruit. We believe as Paul said: I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. We trust in the Lord, Who can make big changes even in a stony heart!

Good afternoon!
One more month has passed since we are visiting orphanage in Rudensk. This month God allowed us hold several meetings with children.
Month began with Christmas program. Children listened story about Jesus in interesting performance. After performance, each child got a Christmas gift. Joy on children’s faces can’t be described by words!
This month we made a party for boys and a party for girls. We talked to children about personal hygiene. We could show children how to look after themselves by the examples followed by the daily hygienic procedures.
In process of growing, children have some heroes or actors who they want to look like. Therefore we talked about “Idols”. We spoke about authorities that we like. And then we discussed the prospects to which lead thoughtless attempts to copy behavior of foreign people.
At the end of the month we talked on “Appreciate What You Have”. In this conversation we drew much and conducted interesting dialogue. We spoke about things which can happened with us if we copy someone’s behavior.
Thank God that we can visit children and communicate with them on different themes. And thank God for those who do not forget us.

Well, one more month of visits to the orphanage in Rudensk has come to an end. Actually, this month was full of trips. We managed to see a lot of children and shared with them biblical stories.
The topics were diverse – we discussed how to value friendship, how to avoid repining and swearing. Also we organized a hen-party and stag-party except general meetings.
When we spoke about discontent and swearing, we heard the noise among the audience. It meant that it was a topical issue for the guys. A lot of acquaintances of our guys often swear and it is quite difficult to stay pure among the dirt. Moreover many of them suffer from discontent. People are often discontented, but the guys from the orphanage have more reasons to be displeased. But the cure for discontent is gratefulness to
God for what He did for us.
We managed to organize a stag-party and hen-party. When the guys hear that we are going to meet separately they are happy. More children come to such kind of meetings because the topics are more interesting and we cannot discuss them together with boys and girls.
The girls speak about how to stay pure – about chastity. It is not quite popular to stay chaste this days. But chastity leads to creating of really strong relationships and family.
The boys spoke about personal hygiene. There were practical lessons – they were given different clothes – T-shirts, trousers, jackets and so on, which they had to fold. It is a valuable practical skill – how to fold clothes to keep it tidy. During that meeting we also discussed how to take care about shoes and clothes.
So the months has come to an end and we are glad that we managed to serve these guys! We will ask God to let us serve for His glory

Grey and cold November came to an end. But in spite of weather we were getting a lot positive emotions from the children from Rudensk orphanage throughout the month. The children were so happy about our meetings that this month they began to prepare the place for meetings beforehand; they put the chairs and turned on the hardware. All this done because they treasure each minute of time spent with us!

This month we finished to speak about friendship. In conclusion we could discuss with the children such topics as ‘Loneliness in friendship’, ‘Not like others’ and ‘Value of friendship’. Besides, we had an opportunity to watch a film about sport, motivation, friendship and unity. And, of course, we arranged their most favorite meetings – boys’ and girls’ time! Boys discussed how to be winners in life and how to set goals and work hard in order to achieve them. Girls had a private talk about beauty and womanhood.

This month I could talk to one person who came to the Rudensk orphanage with us for the first time. He was a little bit embarrassed because he plunged into such atmosphere for the first time. When I asked him what was the hardest in communication with the children he answered that he rarely heard so many foul words throughout one evening! Especially, he remembered Sveta, the girl who has always tried to look like a boy and used bad language a lot. This situation helped us to see that God has done great work in these children’s hearts. Earlier Sveta used to pronounce hundreds of bad words in an hour, was rude to the members of our team and offended smaller kids. And God has changed her heart at present. If she uses bad language now, she tries to ask for forgiveness. Besides, she is one of the first who helps with smaller kids. Last time we had an open-hearted talk about her worries.

I would also like to remind of Alesya’s story who had suffered from nightmares for a long time. We had previously put her story on our site. I managed to talk to her and she was quite open. Now Alesya tries to read the Bible and pray for God to keep her sleep especially before she goes to bed. So she said with joy that nightmares had left her! Thanks God for his mercy and love!

In spite of grey and cold October our visits of this orphanage became even more joyful and bright. We could eventually build close relationships with new comers, who had just begun to attend our meetings! Praise the Lord! This year the make-up of the orphans has changed very much because many graduates left the orphanage. The teenagers that started to come to us are more difficult to work with mostly because of their mental and physical disabilities. At the beginning it was a little bit hard to work with them but God has done wonderful things opening children’s hearts to His Word and giving wisdom to the people from our team who prepare Bible lessons.
This month we continued speaking about friendship: ‘Friendship in action’, ‘Not like others’, ‘How to go through the pain from loss’. Each of the topics was urgent for the orphans. For almost each of them was labeled as ‘not like others’ or a ‘black’ sheep or lost friends because of different reasons, and the main problem is that a few of them understand how to be a friend in practice not in word only even if they would like to be such friends. That’s why we devoted three month to the topic of ‘Friendship’. Besides common meetings we arranged boys’ and girls’ time. The girls had a private talk about the purpose of women. They also talked about God’s will for women, their self-acceptance and self-improvement. The boys-teenagers talked about the purpose of men. They talked a lot about the inner core of a man, his leadership and importance of working not only on appearance but the heart.
We believe and hope that we didn’t waste this time. We hope that the kids will be able to use this knowledge in practice! God bless them in this!