LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN

In April our trips to Vileyka continued. The guys from this boarding school are always pleased with the way they prepare for our arrival. When we drive up to the school, several high school students usually meet us at the gate, then they open the door of the boarding school building, go for the keys to the assembly hall where our meetings take place, then arrange the equipment and chairs themselves. Usually, this is the place where we can just come, greet the guys and just start our program! This month, we celebrated Easter. Therefore, we dedicated one of the meetings to the holiday of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! It is very sad that most of the children associate Easter with Easter cakes, rabbits and eggs. Even though every year we try to tell them about what Jesus Christ did, we still have to repeat it all over again, because the society forgets more and more about the most important essence of this holiday. But we don’t give up! We talked with the guys about Christ and His feat again and again ! After the meeting, we had the opportunity to present gifts with hygiene items and sweets to the children. Special thanks to those who collected these gifts! The children were delighted!

In addition, this month we have completed a series of topics in Vileyka about the miracles of Jesus Christ. The children were especially impressed by the story of how four good friends brought their paralyzed friend through the roof to Jesus, who healed him!

Let’s hope that God will continue to work with children’s hearts and they will not only hear about God, but also let Him into their hearts, into their lives!

Greetings to you, brothers and sisters! Thank God for the opportunity to be part of the spread of God’s kingdom in the Belarusian land! In February, we actively visited the Willian boarding school. This month we talked about the importance of choosing friends, that it depends on this decision, which will be with our lives. We noticed that the guys often don’t know how to express their opinions, so to defend it and we have to explain and learn that it is very important! We want to break the statistics, which suggests that every fourth orphan child is in prison. “Right friends help you to succeed, and not quickly earning through theft” – we said. There are such a problem with girls who are simply manipulated by their girlfriends, which is why the latter will not take place at all and receive professions that were simply imposed on their more influential girlfriends. After all, by communicating one on one, the guys themselves talk about this problem. Also, we talked about 14 truths of love on Saint Valentine’s Day. We revealed, on how young people are being built and what kind of love phases are being built. We talked about five phases: And the first of them – the baby loves himself. And we said: “Guys, take care of such a relationship, because when the person loves only himself, he cannot respect, appreciate and maintain his half and these relationships always bring pain.” The second phase is parental love. This is when the girl wants only one thing – to be the center of attention and if something goes wrong, she stopped admiring and she is not in the center of attention, the relationship is the end. We wanted to show it that dad is spinning near your daughter, but sometimes the guy or a girl is not a parent, but just a person who also expects response actions. The third phase is friendly love. We said that in this relationship a guy or a girl expects that these relationship will bring me and how personally I will look with this person, as well as how everyone will envy us. The fourth phase is youthful love. This is a stage of trial and error! We start looking for friends and understand who we like, and who does not. Fifth phase – Mature love. This is when you think about how to help your friend become better. But during the meeting, the guys say that real love is a romance, if it is, it means that there is love. Someone said that real love is when you have sex. And then we began to explain that love are often confused with lust and sex. But all this is not love! In the films, everything looks like this, but everything is different in life! Young girls in their 14 or 15 years learn about their pregnancy, and guys throw them. So, what is the love? Many questions were interesting observations. Thank God that we could openly talk about it! We also talked about the wonders of Jesus, about the fact that faith is stronger than doubts. On the example of the daughter of Jair, we talked about the fact that there will always be people who will put our faith in doubt. And the guys began to tell how they are fusing them that they are believers. Also, not to doubt, have the right friends who will not destroy faith and part with those who always doubt and does not believe in anything. After all, such people themselves do not achieve anything in life and only judge everyone. And the last thing we discussed are the words of Jesus: “Do not be afraid! Just believe! ” In the last visit, the guys talked a lot about Ukraine, about what worry about people and that the war did not throw in Belarus. We were generally banned to pray in Vileyka, but the guys asked to pray that God would save Ukraine, Russia, as well as Belarus. Hard times unite! Thanks for your prayers! Be blessed!

Hello everyone! We are so glad that God has opened Vileika orphan boarding school for visiting! For more than six months we could not attend school because of the coronavirus. But, thank God, this month we were able to travel and build relationships with the guys and school administration again!

We came to the school again in early December. A lot of guys didn’t remember us and it was very sad. Nevertheless, we gathered all the guys in the event hall and tried to remind them who we are. The first topic for discussion was: “Time to dream.” Many guys told me that they don’t know how to dream. The fact that the guys were extremely open and actively involved in our conversation surprised me. The housemasters of the orphanage were present during that discussion, as they informed us later, and also were thinking about their dreams. For the first time I could see housemasters of the orphanage who are not distracted during discussion. Now they really listened to the topic and tried to discuss it with us. Thank god! The next time we visited the children they were already waiting for us. It was so nice to see how the guys ran out to meet us and everyone wanted to tell us about something that had happened to them recently! At this meeting we talked about the importance of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a problem for many children who live in orphanages and orphan boarding school. We know that unforgiveness destroys lives and breaks destinies. This is what we also found out at the first meeting when the guys talked about themselves and about their loved ones. One expression sounded like this: “I will never forgive!” Our team realized that the topic of forgiveness is important more than ever! Our meeting began and we talked about the petition and about forgiveness and unforgiveness and what God says about it. We tried to explain that forgiveness is a process and there was much debate about that during the meeting. We ended up saying that if forgiveness is very difficult for you then ask Jesus to be the one who forgive your offenders on your behalf and the ice began melting! Unforgiveness has lived in children`s hearts for years and now freedom came. Also, on the eve of the Christmas holidays we talked about Christmas. We reminded them of the purpose of Jesus coming and now they can be at peace with God through Jesus. The guys have so much wrong stereotypes about the Christmas in their heads so we had to make a lot of efforts to clear it all up for them. A lot of children thought that Santa Claus is Jesus! And some of the guys even said that Santa Claus and Jesus are relatives. Someone said that Jesus is a superhero. We realized that a lot of new guys who have not been present in our meetings have a lot of false conceptions about God. We told them biblical story of Christmas. About the angel who came to Mary and about Jesus supernatural birth and what He experienced in first hours of His human life. We told them that the Son of God wasn’t given any room to stay so He was born in a stable and laid on a straw. The shepherds came first to worship God and the only thing they could give to Him was their hearts. When the meeting came to an end many children from the sixth grade asked for a children’s bible. “We want to know more about God, give us bibles for Christmas.” Oh, it was so pleasant to hear! When we were driving back to home all of us were glad that none of the children asked for toys or phones, they asked for bibles instead! We are so glad that the boarding trips have resumed. So many children need the joyful news about God’s love to each of them. Thank you so much for your prayers for us! We believe that joint service to the children will glorify our God even in a greater measure!

As you know, Valentine’s day is celebrated on February 14. The whole world is looking for a source of true love and elevates romantic relationships in perfect absolute. Especially teenagers. Especially those boys and girls who constantly live nearby. On account of the holiday, we prepared a treat for the guys. But the cakes and juice were just an introduction to a deep conversation. Our new volunteer Nikita suggested to explore the biblical approach to love and relationships in general. For the guys it was a very honest conversation and sincere testimony of a christian about family life. After all, it’s not easy to establish relationships between two different planets, between boys and girls. Nikita has his own family, they have a child. He shared not only the joys, but also the difficulties of family relationships. Teenagers often have “pink glasses» through which they see their life partners as perfect human beings. Indeed, the main emphasis was made on the fact that God is the source of true love, and the fullness of His love was manifested in His Son Jesus Christ. Love is primarily an action. Truly loves not the who receives, but the one who gives. We want our guys from the orphanage to grow into full-fledged responsible husbands and fathers.

In January our tutees were back to school returning from their long Christmas holidays. A lot of them spend their holidays in Italy, some went home while there were those who had to celebrate New Year at the asylum. In our first meeting this year we asked the kids to share about their holidays. For almost every tutee it is a true pride to claim he or she spent this special time of the year with their families – parents and siblings. And the real challenge is to stay awake as long as possible and not fall asleep during the New Year’s night. They were so excited to say when was the latest time they went to bed. Certainly the kids would naturally omit their family traditions to get drunk and raise scandals. For them this all goes together with the notion of celebrating something. So that’s why the kids would remember and tell only about the good time they spent TOGETHER – because the orphanage robbed it from them from early childhood. These simple children stories prove absolute vitality of every human being to have a Home. Not just a house with a rooftop and walls. The government provided they have it. But a Home is first and foremost about relationships, acceptance and genuine care. And this kind of heaven the Lord descended to bring back to this earth. Our prayers go for the Vileyka Orphanage tenants so that through believing in Jesus Christ they would one day retrieve the feeling of acceptance and belongness to their heavenly Home. We arranged a big celebration at the asylum. In cooperation with the youth from Golgotha church we brought a puppet theatre to the kids on January 24th. The kids were in for games, a lot of interactive scenes between the puppets and their excited audience, getting-to-know activities and of course a surprise behind the curtain! The heroes of the puppet show reminded a lot of the kids so the latter could relate to them easily – they could see the puppets who make friends, break up, act naughty and are always excited to get to know new things – just like themselves. The heroes of the staged play were witnesses of the Christmas story, of how Lord Jesus came to this world. And the faraway Palestine became so close while the events were unfolding right before the children’s eyes. No holiday goes without gifts! So at the end of the party each child received a present. Everyone was pleased and happy! A lot of kids would approach the performers and thank them and a lot of them expressed their gratitude for the gifts. And then we had to leave – only to come back again! Until February!