LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

The shortest and the richest with activities month of serving in Vileyka. We’ve got nice memories of the last month of the winter, it wasn’t so rough and we could visit Vileyka boarding school without problems. I’d like to notice, that with every time we come to the school we feel we become closer to each other, they learn to trust us telling us their stories, about their parents, their problems, and they ask us to pray for them. It’s very important for me that they become more open, don’t keep inside what worries them and they are not that much aggressive anymore. I want to do more for them, and as I’ve got an experience in working with boarding schools, I can say that the best way to get closer to children and to share love and care with them is to organize a camp. That’s why we are praying for this opportunity for this summer.
This month we had different trips. On the first visit we had a theme “Jesus, who we don’t know”, that Jesus is a creator of each of us, and each of us is special and unique,  and as our Creator, He wants to be closer to us and to help us. We told them that they are not alone, that they’ve got God and He cares about them, even though they are in an orphanage. On our second visit, we invited to come with us a puppet show with a play called “Friendship”. You should know about this play form our previous reports from other orphanages. On our third visit, we invited Christian Youth Evangelical theatre. They showed a play about the Father who had three children with different talents. He is giving them their part of legacy and leaves them in hope that they will wisely use what they’ve got.
So, their independent lives begin: the life of an engineer, inventor of medicines and a musician. We see the life of each of them and how the evil one comes and wants to lead them in the wrong direction. Only Fathers words (Scriptures from the Bible) helped the engineer and the inventor of medicines to withstand and not to be tempted, and the musician could not resist and fell for temptation, he enjoyed his sins and the fame and popularity that he got. It all led to the emptiness of his soul and he disowned his Father. It was a vivid example of what we usually have our talents and skills and how we use them. Children enjoyed it a lot. I can be sure that they learnt from this lesson. On our last trip, we watched one the best movies in my opinion – called Courageous. It’s a great movie for men. It happened that the mentors at that day were men, and some children were whispering to me that those men were crying. I was happy to hear because this film could change those mature men and how they treat orphans, and most of all it and change their attitude to God. Everyone liked that movie, perhaps because of the hope that children saw. The hope that in future their lives can be different from their parents’ lives. This movie was for older children. Small kids had  time with two girls from the church, they were talking with children about God, so that those small kids would understand it.
We thank God for another month of serving Him.

The second month of the winter has passed. It was very successful despite of the fact that we missed one trip to Vileyka because the majority of our team was ill. We managed to visit the orphanage three times and every visit was remarkable.
The fist trip happened during winter vacations and that’s why we could come to children earlier and spend more time with them. We showed one film about sports achievements and also played football with older boys and girls. Children love sports there and compete with different schools. Sport unites everybody and that’s why it was a good opportunity to become closer to children and also to dispel the myth that Christians just pray all the time, read the Bible, seat in churches and don’t have any sense of humour. Children thought so and told us about it and also joked that we are not real Christians. I don’t know how this stereotype had been formed in them. The main thing is that they changed their views about it!
During the rest trips we were trying to change children’s opinions about God. During the lessons we told them that God is not an angry policeman, neither is he a Santa Claus who just presents gifts on Christmas. He is not just a carpenter from Bethlehem, neither is he an evil old man who punish everybody for any sins. But he IS a loving, forgiving and caring God of the whole Universe who is not careless about the lives of the orphans. Besides that, one member of our team shared her testimony about her difficult childhood with drug and alcohol addicted parents. Only personal meeting with God helped her to change her and their lives, to get forgiveness for all the sins… After this testimony children got a kind of hope and many of them cried. I believe that God is changing their lives, too and that they will get better lives with our Christ. We pray for that, and you, please, join our prayers.

The last month of the year is already over. December is one of the most difficult, busy, but at the same time wonderful, interesting and blessed months in the year. Bustle is everywhere, people are looking for presents, sales, Christmas trees, food. We are the same, but before it started, we wanted to create an unforgettable Christmas for the orphans from Vileyka. And we managed to do it only thanks to God and our friends.
I want to begin describing this Christmas with the point when I realized that I want every orphan to have a present this year. Of course I couldn’t have made all the 163 presents alone and that’s why I asked for help the members of church “Bethlehem” I go to. I took the necessary information from the administration of the orphanage, made some reminders for people to know what to put into the gift box, wrote down the names of all the children and distributed them among the members of my church. Almost every family from our church participated in this project. They made the presents with such a pleasure and signed the post cards. In a month all the gifts were collected and together with the young people and the pastor of our church we went to Vileyka, where we sang songs, played games and talked about Jesus. The culmination was the gifts for every child. Children couldn’t believe that they all had separate and individual gifts, signed and collected for them by families. They were so excited! They thanked not only us, but also the members of the church who left their addresses on the post cards for further communication. I was really surprised when on the next day I was told by one family that one child called back and thanked this family for the present! This was an incredible time for everybody! I thank God for the open hearts of our brothers and sisters and also for the thankful hearts of the children.
We had another visit to Vileyka with a christian youth theatre. It was an interesting meeting with children, because before that moment they haven’t seen any performances and such theatres haven’t visited them. In the very beginning, when the announcer came and started getting acquainted with the children, they were very noisy. And I was worried that they were not interested in it. But when the actors appeared on the scene, children kept silent till the very end as they were really interested in the performance. Then they couldn’t stop applauding! They asked the actors to come back again. Some words about the performance: it was about the people created by God but who come to difficult situations and who are further separated from God by fashion, money, alcohol, clubs, drugs. These things kill their dreams, and only God can release them from their sins. Everyone was excited, even their educators.
The last thing I want to tell you about is the trip of the biblical college to Vileyka. This team prepared an interesting programme and even laid the table. First, we gathered in a gym and played different games there. Children love sport games and as the result they were jolly. Then we went to the class of senior students where we sang Christian songs, read the Bible about Lazarus and even created a sketch of this story: children played different roles – that of Lazarus, the rich, God and Abraham. The orphans liked this wise story, they found out that to know God you don’t need the dead to come and to tell you about Him. We are given the Bible, church, people and nature that proclaims the existence of Living God.
We thank everybody who participated in this Christmas miracle for the orphans! Thanks for your infinite prayers!

Hello everyone, who views our website, supports us, feels for us and prays for our ministry.
This month God showed us a new orphanage where we can serve orphans, so we thank our God that it was relatively easy to talk to the administration of the orphanage about our ministry. We also thank God for kids being open-hearted and for behaving well during our lessons.
This orphanage is a bit different from all the others, because it’s a “specialised boarding school for children with difficult speech disorder”, so there are not only orphans but also kids who have some speech problems and they get help from speech therapists who work there. Many of these kids need dental braces to align and straighten their teeth and help to position them. The government doesn’t give money to buy dental braces, as a result a number of kids are in need of them.
I would like to share the experience of our trips there. First of all, I shall begin with saying that kids there are very friendly, from our first trip they started to try and get to know us and talk to us, it was really nice and encouraging. During our first trip we were playing with them, singing and telling them our testimonies, we let them know how God has changed our lives and it encouraged kids to become friendly towards us. We also learnt that children like playing football and they invited us to come and play some time, so we did. It was a hard game but the kids won, we were very happy for them, but what really pleased us was that when they were loosing, they didn’t start fighting, but instead they tried harder and won. We haven’t seen this in any other orphanage that we’ve visited. And what’s more, other kids (who didn’t play) came to the gym to cheer for their team. We were amazed to see such friendship.
During our next trip we showed them a film called “Facing the Giants”. It’s an American Christian drama film about American football team. The coach guides and urges each one of his players to give the maximum effort, and motivates them to believe they can win under God’s provision. The kids really enjoyed the film. After the final whistle they all jumped up and started applauding. Later they asked us what was the name of the film as they wanted to watch it again and also to recommend it to their friends.
There were also lessons about friendship. We told them about the real friendship between David and Jonathan. The kids liked the story and promised to be that friendly to each other.
That’s how we spent a month in Vileyka. Please, pray that the Word of God would touch these kids’ hearts and they would accept our Heavenly Father in their lives.