LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

Our service in the orphanage in Vileyka is growing very fast. Our team is working with two groups of junior school and all groups of senior school who want to attend our lessons. I want to share how we work with the older groups. We don’t have a music worker now, so we put emphasis on biblical lessons and sometimes on games. We try to make our lessons bright and recognizable using pictures, videos, cartoons. We started from learning the Creation firstly the children to know the truth and secondly to dispel an illusion of the Theory of Evolution. Children didn’t like the idea that they came from monkeys. The truth that God created them and everything that is around us and that they are God’s children they liked most of all. They were astonished at God’s power to create the World for 6 days. The most difficult thing to understand was that they are created in imitation of God.
Several next meetings we spent talking about God’s Names. The Bible gives us different names such as Elohim (Almighty God), All-seeing God, Justifying God, Emmanuel (God is with us), Adonai (Lord and Sovereign), Yahve (God will trace) on which we stopped to learn in details on Joseph’s example. We told that God will trace their lives if they obey God’s Word not succumbing to devil’s tricks. During that lesson I tried to draw a parallel between Joseph’s life and orphans’ lives as any orphanage is not the place for a childhood. Moreover, many children are victims of abuse. Joseph’s life seemed to be much more difficult for children than theirs, but with a happy end! The reason is that Joseph stayed trust in God and never gave up. And God blessed him. I am sure that for children Joseph’s life will be an example to follow.
On the last day of October we decided to plan a trip to Minsk for children from Vileyka’s orphanage to distract them from Halloween. There were two major aims of this trip: evangelical and cultural (or entertaining). Firstly, we visited the Museum of Great Patriotic War were guides told and showed us the history of our country during World War II. It was very interesting. Then we moved to our church Bethlehem, were children had dinner. After dinner, there were games for children, relay races, songs, testaments and prayers. Children left us with happy smiles on their faces! Firstly, because the dinner was so tasty that even our team couldn’t eat everything given. Secondly, both children and educators were at our Baptist church for the first time and they were interested in the place where people who visit them every week and tell them about God go to. There is one Baptist church in Vileyka, but they don’t have a proper building, that’s why every Sunday there is a service but at pastor’s house. That’s why neither children nor their educators know about Christian churches. I was asked a lot of questions about our belief and our church. It was a pleasure for me to answer to them. I am glad educators have positive opinions about our church now as they can have an effect on children. If the educators speak only good things about our team and our service, the children will also look on us as an authority. Also, the educators will tell the rest educators about their trip to Minsk. Nevertheless, children were our main goal. They got many good emotions, they heard about Christ and visited God’s church. In my opinion, the main aims of this trip were reached. Praise God!

The summer has gone too quickly and September came. The month is associated differently: for some this is the Harvest time, for some other people – the beginning of the new academic year, and for us this is the beginning of our service in the orphanage. For me as a leader this year is very special. Several people joined our service on a regular basis. This is very encouraging for me and big help. I thank God that in this service I’m not the only one from my church. We have many plans for these children and I’m sure we’ll realize them with God’s help.
For the first visit we invited our friend, clown-animator Maxim. He is a very funny man and children loved him. He gave air balloons to everybody and taught how to make different figures from them such as swords, dogs and etc. The children were excited! The culmination was soap bubble show! Maxim even told the whole story using soap bubbles and that was incredible! It was such happiness to see the children laughing, especially the little ones. Then they came to me asking when Maxim comes next time?
For the next trip we were not alone again. Some people who do bike trials professionally joined us. It was for the first time in our lives when we saw such tricks. It was unforgettable. We couldn’t imagine that people can do such things with bikes: they jumped over planks, got on top of balks on one wheel, jumped over people and so on. Then they allowed riding bikes. Children tried to do something similar to what they saw but it was difficult physically and technically. Unbelievable! It was a pleasure for me to see children having fun so sincerely.
The last visit to the orphanage was associated with the topic “The Bible”. We told children that regardless of religion Christians read The Bible and believe It is the Word of God. We told how many books are in the Old and New Testament, who and how wrote the Bible. The most important thing – we told about the main topics described in the Bible: God’s Character, the Sacred Justice for sins and disobedience, God’s blessing for faith and obedience, Jesus as the Savior and Sacrifice for our sins, God’s Kingdom and His glory. Children didn’t know many things but they were interested to listen to us and to ask questions. We are glad children are not indifferent to the Bible. They were interested to find out what is written specially to them in this Holy Bible. Join us in our prayers for these children that the Word of God reaches their hearts!

Well, school year is over as well as our visits to the orphanage in Vileyka. That month was a terrific one for everyone. Children become more and more precious for us with every visit and it’s sad to realize that we won’t be able to see them for the whole summer. The issue is that the kids are leaving for summer camps and we are not able to come to those camps with our program. However, we have planned the surprise — the camp for them in the last week of August. In my opinion this is going to be a good time for the camp because they should already miss us and also it will be a good spiritual beginning of a new school year. Please, pray for that camp so that we would raise enough funds, so that there wouldn’t be problems with cooks, the team and documents. On May we had lessons on topics of envy, treachery and the aftermath of our sinful desires. We teached the kids how not to envy, about the effects the envy can cause and the solution God offers. The same frame we used for all the lessons. I was a pleasant time because they had many questions and made their personal conclusions. Kids behavior apparently improved. The tutors say we managed to gain kids’ credibility. It’s wonderful to know we can change them with God’s help. The last gift for them was visiting of the basketball game between NBA stars and Belarusian national team. Although the kids love soccer more, it was a marvelous event for them. Going to Minsk for a game where real professianals like Jerome Williams, David Wood, Paul Grant and best belarusian sportsmen played in the Sports Palace — that was unforgettable experience for children. There was a dynamic and ineresting game. Even I have never seen the game of such a high level. After the game we made the picture with the stars. Glory to God for those happy moments in the lives of orphans!

This time we are going to tell you about our work with little kids. I couldn’t tell you about it, because I work with older kids. There are three people working with little children, they are Olya, Anastacia and Veronica. I asked them to write a little note about their ministry, so here it is: Hi everyone! I’m Olya and this is my first letter to you. Children from Vileyka boarding school are always happy when somebody visits them. When we walk along the hall, we always hear “Hello-s” from everywhere. Myself, Nastya and Veronica are involved in work with the second grade students. They are very talkative and easy-going, they like telling how they are doing, they show pictures they draw, they enjoy playing drawing. They listen to Bible stories with a great interest and ask a lot of questions. Once it happened that there were 4 weeks between our first and second trip, and we were surprised that children remembered the topic we were talking at our first meeting. It is so amazing to see how God works in these little hearts, how they change gradually and become well-behaved. We were pleased to hear when kids asked us to bring Children’s Bibles. Now everyone has his own Bible and tell us stories from it even before we talk about them. We praise God for the opportunity to spend time with these children.

The spring and warmth have finally come and it’s not so terrible to look at children who usually meet us only in T-shirts as during the winter they didn’t want to listen to us and put on warmer clothes. Here is the time to play different games with children and we decided to coincide the pleasant with the useful. For this purpose we invited young people from Christian sports club “AWANA”. We asked the administration to give us children and the gym for several hours and they were happy to let them go with us as they could have some rest. Children were happy when saw 2 buses filled with young people. They were all getting acquainted actively and communicating with each other. In the gym we split the children into 4 groups (as there were about 60 children) and there we had the first part of our service – relay race. The children competed with each other and got points. After that, there was the second part of the service – the lesson. The team leaders split into different subteams in different corners of the gym where they held lessons. After the lessons leaders asked questions and those who answered correctly, got points for their teams too. The topic of the lesson was “Friendship” viewed through the example of David and Jonathan. The context of the lesson was that Jesus is our friend and we can have the same relations with Him as David and Jonathan had. The third part of our service was the closing part – the conclusions made after the lesson, singing Christian songs and presenting sweets to the teams who scored the majority of the points. But no one was left unnoticed as the winners shared their sweets with all the children. And we were happy to see that the lesson wasn’t in vain. So we spent 3 hours with children and they didn’t want us to leave them. The “AWANA” leaders liked this meeting and wanted to come back in April.
On our next meetings we strengthened the topic “Friendship” and told the children how to be a true friend on the examples of Peter and Jesus himself. We told about their trust, treason and forgiveness. In spite of all these things, they preserved their friendship and it became stronger. We wanted children to do the same in their lives as we noticed that instead of forgiving they start revenging, betraying, even beating each other. After that meeting some of them promised to change their behavior. We pray about our friends for God to change their hearts, characters. And also we ask God to open their hearts to accept Jesus as their Savior.