School year is nearly over in our country, so is our ministry for the season. In a month we again will say goodbye
to graduates from orphanages, who’ll go to study to different towns. We’ll see those who’ll stay in the 
orphanage only in September. Perhaps, this is the reason why older kids try to spend more time with our team and long for one to one conversations. It’s usually hard to gather kids in May, 
so there are less of them at our meetings, kids just get outside to enjoy the long-awaited warmth. This year, though, is different, children try to not miss our meetings and even bring friends with them! 
Older students got to know new biblical characters – Daniel and his friends. There was an end of month meeting and kids remembered Daniel’s story. Moreover this month we had visits to Rudensk – we had meetings for boys and girls separately, where they discussed how to become a happy wife from biblical point of view, and boys talked about their dreams and the ways to make them come true. Younger kids continued getting to know
new stories from New Testament. They learned about a parable 
of the prodigal son, kind samarian, good Pastor and a lost sheep, about tax collector and pharisees’ prayer. They also had a meeting where I was delighted to see that kids not only remembered biblical stories they heard that month, but also many other stories they heard through out the year. We know, it’s God Who is doing His work in kinds hearts, and we are really grateful to Him for that!
Children are always happy to see us.
It happens that the relationship in the orphanage between the children is very complicated. Because many 
of them want at least somehow to be above the rest, and the more so, no one likes when they are humiliated. Maybe this is not noticeable at the first acquaintance with the children, but sometimes, 
when you often communicate with them, you can see how secretly they “show where your place”, if someone tried to do what they couldn’t.
To some extent, our visits are a distraction from finding out the relationship between each other and the opportunity to see another world – a world full of love and grace. On our meetings you can be one team for an hour, without resenting each other.
Interesting biblical stories can help us to become a team.
This month, the children listened to stories about Joseph. For a few weeks the children was listening stories, and, with the help of pictures, became participants in the events that were in the life of Joseph. They faced the dislike that Joseph felt, with the betrayal of the brothers, tired to feel the emotions of Joseph, who were sold into slavery. We learned what Patifar’s wife made to Joseph, how he was feeling in prison, and how he became the second after Pharaoh.
But the most important thing is that the children listened that Joseph trusted God in all his difficulties. We listened to how he evaluated his actions not only with moral criteria, but also with God’s criteria. This allowed Joseph to live a life with God. And we told this to the children.
In addition, this month we had a meeting in which children made crafts with their own hands, which were useful for them (the guys did photo frames), and well-remembered about our meetings.
Thanks to everyone who is interested in our service, and thanks to all who support us!
This month has been especially bright as we had a wonderful opportunity to tell children about Easter – the celebration day of 
Jesus Christ’s resurrection.
In the beginning of the month we held separate classes dedicated to the Easter with the senior and junior children. We were telling them about the great deed of the Son o
f God, and about the price He paid to bring salvation to the world. Most of the children already heard from us about the core of Easter last year. But now there are some new kids in the Belynichi orphanage for whom this information was unknown: most of them associated Easter with colored eggs and various bakery. We hope that from now on they will remember about Jesus Christ, who suffered at Calvary for each of us!
During next meeting we held another Easter program with participation of a jolly clown, who was not only amusing the kids, but also was telling them about Christ’s Resurrection. At the end everyone got his long-anticipated gift.
Besides the festive events, the elder kids continued their acquaint
ance with new heroes of the Bible, such as Naaman and wise queen Esther. The example of each of these characters shows how strongly the faith in God influences the people’s fates. We hope that our dear children also visit our meetings not in vain, and that the word that they hear would penetrate deep in their hearts!
To the younger kids we told about the kind shepherd who went to find his lost sheep. With the help of this character we managed to show the little children that they also have the Shepherd and Father, Who never leaves them, even if their blood father or mother left them.
In these latter days the children meet us very cheerfully and warm – like long-expected and beloved guests. All the barriers in communication have disappeared. The changes are seen also in the teachers who became more open and friendly (it was not like that at all in the beginning).
During the latest meeting the kids were amazed by the Easter gifts – they were running to each of us, telling their gratitude with all the sincerity of their hearts. Someone happened to receive a car, someone received some finery – everyone got something of his own, unique, unexpected, as a real miracle. An that is what we all happen to need in life badly – a simple miracle of love, acceptance and friendship, realization of a simple truth: this world needs you.
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 fi
ne. 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 V
lad 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 w
as 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!
April is truly a festive month. The most joyful spring holiday is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it was celebrated on April 8. 
We decided to organise a celebration for our friends from Vileyka boarding school. We prepared a programme, a little play, prizes and set off on the way to children.
Our Easter meeting happened to be on April 13. 
To make it more enjoyable we separated younger kids from older ones to keep them attentive and interested.
This kind of meeting is a great chance for us to tell the kids and their teachers about true meaning of Easter, to give them hope for eternal life wit God, to proclaim the victory over death.
All children followed along the play we put on – there was true angel and the good news from God. 
Older kids eagerly took part in an Easter quiz. Everyone got a handmade prize – a badge with fish shaped Christian sign. One of our leaders, who joined recently, Sasha Shvedov, told us about the meaning of this symbol and hand it out to everyone who came to this meeting.
On Saturday April 21, we had a long-awaited outing to the river Bank of Vileyka 
water reservoir with the whole school. Our leaders’ team had nearly 40 people. It was quite a while ago, I guess, since this “beach” had so much going on at this time of the year. Uncle Valera’s culinary school never lacks people who are helping : kids were cutting vegetables and making salad, older boys were proudly helping adults with BBQ. When table was all full and set up for us, one of the kids said : “Finally, we can start on food!”
We don’t have enough time to speak to everyone we want,
when we come to the school on Fridays, and this Saturday outing was a great opportunity for us to catch up on it: just to talk, listen, hug and have pictures taken.
Seems like the most popular person that day was a 6 year old boy called Nazariy, whom parents brought with them to this celebration. Girls were kind of competing to hold him, 
some were saying that one day they will have a baby of their own.
Even though the day was windy and there was dust and sand flying around, and you could feel it in your mouth, nobody complained. Everyone was smiling, playing games, talking, admiring nature.
Another thing that made us even closer was singing songs with guitar while sitting on a river bank.
Children are usually not that eager on comments and saying thank you, but this time it was such a big number feedback and it wasn’t just “it was cool”, but rather “thank you very much for this day, it was great!”. I’m sure that “great” meant not only the food we had, but they will be dreaming about repeating it again and remember it forever.
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 