LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

God blessed us this month and we had an opportunity to visit Smilovichi. We are glad that our ministry haven’t lost its power for many years and children can still hear the good news about God!
The children get to the social center right from their homes because of the devastating lifestyle of their parents. There is a new boy in the center, Vlad by name. He has just come here. ‘Vlad, why are you here?’ – ‘I don’t know, everything was fine. I went to school and was taken from there and brought to the social center’. After talking to him, we found out that his parents drank hard and he did all housework. He is rigid, preserved and unsociable and reminds of a hedgehog. At first, he didn’t communicate with us and just examined us and what we did. He ignored talks about Jesus. Later we knew that Vlad was keen on fishing. I can just suppose that such an activity was the only possibility to get rid of his drunk parents.
This month we celebrated Easter and puppet theatre came to the social center in honor of this. The children who had recently come to the center never saw such a performance because of their stolen childhood. Throughout the show, there was a lot of laughter and joy. The children, especially the smaller ones, applauded, commented loudly on the show and got excited! After the performance, we gave the children presents. We had been preparing the presents for all this month because we wanted to put there useful things.
This month was also encouraging for us because God helped us build relationships with the administration of the social center. Just yesterday we went to the center and discussed the theme ‘the greatest creation’. Most of the children have low self-esteem so it’s hard for them to believe that they are great and the most wonderful creation of God. At the end, I took a mirror and showed they could see the greatest God’s creation looking at the mirror. So I turned it to the children and said: ‘you are the greatest and the most beautiful creation of God!’ The children didn’t get used to such compliments. Some of them were embarrassed, others closed their eyes and giggled and those like Vlad said that it couldn’t be so.
Thank you, friends, for praying for our team and the development of the ministry! Thank you for your involvement in breaking up the rocks of unbelief and bringing back to life children who are God’s wonderful creation!

I want to share with you how our trips to the orphanage on Tuesdays are taking place. The new children, who were brought earlier this month, were very open to us and to the word of God, so we decided to talk about sin, devoting a lot of time to it. In order to make this topic easier to understand, many moments were presented in a playful form and even the educators wanted to join us, expressing their approval. After all, all the children we come to had lived in families where sin is the norm of life for their parents, grandparents. Almost from birth, they see cruelty, the immense use of alcohol, drugs and other sinful behavior from the most authoritative people – moms and dads. One of the girls, Snezhana, said that her mother does nothing for her upbringing, often goes away at night and leads an immoral lifestyle than traumatizes her baby’s heart. Remaining alone, not to be afraid, Snezhana prayed, and then fell asleep with faith that her mother would return home and nothing bad would happen to her. One of these days, Snezhana’s mother was brought to the hospital because of an overdose, and she was taken to the orphanage. “Why? Why God, if You are such Almighty, you can not make my mother not to sin and become a good mom? Snejana asked. ” There was so much pain and disappointment in her voice and eyes. We answered her questions and supported her, surrounding her with care and attention. Praise God for the opportunity to influence these children and give them the love they need so much!
During our next meeting, we talked with the children about what to do if you have already sinned and your conscience torments you. In my opinion, it’s not enough just to tell a person about sin and show all its disadvantages. It is important to give these children a way out and help them to deal with sin. The purpose of this meeting is to teach children how to ask forgiveness if they are in some way wrong with people or God, and also learn how to forgive others.
Last week, we arranged a lesson for creativity for the children. Sveta taught girls how to do hair clips, and Zhenya with Nazar painted engravings. Everyone were pleased with the time spent and the result of their work. For Vasilisa this time was especially joyful, because she dreamed of a beautiful hairpin and even managed to make two during our meeting.
We are very grateful to all who are praying for these beautiful children and our team! Thank God!

Good afternoon!
In February we have visited the Smilovichi orphanage. This month there were more children than last month. Each of them has its own unique story. The girl Luda, who has been there for several months, at the last meeting said that she is going to be taken home. And this is a great joy for us! Because the family reunification is our dream!
Despite cold weather and various life circumstances, all the meetings with the guys took place. Among the children there were new children, whom we met for the first time, but there were also those guys who were not for the first time in this orphanage. It is sad that the children repeatedly experience the betrayal of their parents – the closest and dearest people. While Luda’s face is shining these guys are stressed and their eyes are full of sadness and pain. I’m glad that the teachers who work in the orphanage take care of children and try to support them as much as possible. Because of this situation, the topic “God is our consoler”, which we had at one of our meetings, was very relevant. Honestly, it is quite difficult to talk about consolation to children who have been repeatedly betrayed. They were already trying to forgive, to trust again, to see good things again in people, but they were disappointed again. Despite the complexity of the situation, God reveals the children’s hearts and, we believe that at the right time, the sown word will bear fruit for Eternity!
In addition, the children learned that Jesus is a teacher, who still teaches us and guides us through the Bible. Also, the guys have learned that Jesus is the best doctor who is able to heal not only physical pain, but also heartache.
At the last meeting we had creativity lesson. This format of our meetings is very popular with the children from the Smilovichi orphanage. The children had the opportunity to make beautiful flowers for their upcoming holiday on March, 8. Sveta – our head of creativity lessons, at first was very worried, whether boys like to make flowers or not. But it turned out that they were also happy to make flowers which they can give to their teachers or sisters.

Good day! Christmas and New Year celebrations are over. We already visited Smilovichie orphanage. Since the beginning of the year, the number of children there decreased. It is a good sign, as it means that many children finally find their homes. There always were at least 1-2 kids at our meetings. It’s a different communication compared to a big group. Here you can get a response from the kid straight away; you can communicate and have a real discussion on different topics. At our first meeting after holidays we talked about God is love. You do not see the shadow of the light from the match on the wall because it is light already, same with God, He is the light and He sees us all from inside. Even though there was only one kid, we could talk about the meaning of our lives and about what God did for our salvation.
At the second meeting, we talked about God as the One who is present everywhere. There were two kids and we could share from our own lives about God, who keeps everything under His control. We shared our testimonies about God’s guidance and asked them if they would like to trust their lives into God’s hands. This month we talked about God again. We talked about God as Bread for our souls, that we could feed and nourish our souls from His unending love and mercy. We shared some stories, where we showed how God cares about us every day. At the end of the month, we did some crafts. Kids themselves could do beautiful notebooks. They used different decorations to make it what they wanted. They got great results. Thanks to everyone who remembers and cares about us. May God bless you!

We continue visiting our children in Smilovichi social center. During this time, they have become very dear and close to us. Despite the fact that children often come and go God does His miracles and they open their hearts and we become close to each other.

At this moment, there are two children in the social center. They are two girls. We are surely happy about this. It means that there are less children here and more children are at home with their families. At first, the girls were very shy. They did not want to come to us and were reserved. Now they are more open. They play with us, listen to our bible stories and even sing with us. The girls know little about God. So we are glad to have an opportunity to tell them about God and His love for them and get to know them better.

This month we have told the girls about God’s character. They have already known that God is holly and righteous and that He is a Creator. When we were telling them that God created them, they could learn an amazing story of the creation of the world. It turned out that the girls heard that God made Earth and everything on it for the first time in their life! I especially like and remember the meeting where we were speaking that God is love. I appreciated the example that one of the girls gave when we asked them to tell us whether they had seen the evidence of God’s love in their lives. She said that once she had felt very bad and asked God to help her in her hard situation. So God heard her! That moment in her life became for her great evidence that God is real and He loves her! We are glad that these girls do not lose faith in spite of hardships in their lives. We are happy that we can speak the same language with them but it is not always easy. Every person in our team understands that it does not go to us but ti God! We couldn’t do anything without Him!