Grace and peace to all who follow the news of our team and read our page!
First impressions in January are positive. Our children are longing for us, rested at home, with friends, 
and someone just in orphanage. Despite the huge vacation holidays, gifts, chocolates, it’s nice to know that you are waited for more than just a Santa Claus. T
hough not everyone, but it’s cool! It surprises me and inspires! It’s inspiring that someone wants to improve his live and to know God, who can simply love.
In our first visit, everyone who was with us, told us what they were doing, how they celebrated Christmas and what gifts did they received. It’s great that they trust us their experiences, joys and sometimes sorrows from the “small” gifts. We’ve just wanted to talk, as through it we build the communication relationsh
ip. I started the communication with the fact that today I want not only me to talk, but I would like to hear the voice of each of the children. At the end, there was an 
encouraging word from the Bible for the upcoming academic quarter, that for having wealth and success in life, we must endeavor (Proverbs 21:5). We were praying and asking God to help us with it. We have also talked about the unfairness, how to react on it according to the Bible as an example of the Apostle Paul and the Book of Proverbs. The topic raised great interest and debate since it was hard for them to accept the fact that they can not revenge enemies by responding with evil on evil, rejoice to the grief of their enemy. I believe that this word has touched everyone, because we all face with injustice. Only they can do their choice, we gave it to them and showed alternative reaction and behavior to such cases.
This month, we met with our children again, who had two weeks of winter holidays. During one of the lessons, we discussed how they spent the Christmas holidays. Every child told us where they were, with whom they communicated, and what did they do. Many of them spent the New Year in Ireland. They received a lot of gi
fts, they watched various performances, played a lot, and just walked around the festive city. All the children had very good memories and emotions. Almost all of them were very happy, they left Ireland with good experiences. Every child wanted to share his joy with us. It was very nice to talk to them.
Every time we come, they met us, hug us, and just want to be heard. We are trying to pay more attention to each child. Currently, there is the issue of closing of Grozovsky orphanage. Children will be able to live there only until the summer. After that, graduates will leave to study in different cities. The rest of the children, who have not yet graduated from high school, will be allocated in various orphanages around the country. Some of the children, those who are a little more fortunate, will be sent to
new families. Several young children may leave so
on. Therefore, we are trying to invest as much as possible in the children of this orphanage. So that even if we will not see them in the future, they will always remember what we taught them at our Bible lessons.
This month, orphans got to know good Biblical parables: “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”, “The Parable of the Good Samaritan.” We hope that guys will always remember that God is always waiting for them and accepts them the way they are. It is important and useful exercise to be good to other people. Besides our regular meetings, we had a Christmas program. Musical meeting, which was dedicated to Christmas, took place in this orphanage. Every child was able to get a gift after it.
A Christmas programme was held in Rudensk this month. Children could s
ee and understand why Christ 
came to Earth and how difficult it is to live without God. We were very happy to see children and especially teachers who had an opportunity to hear gospel. After the performance children got presents. Every child always waits for this moment! That’s so pleasant to see happy children’s faces! That’s why we are thankful to those who hel
ped to collect these gifts and participated
financially! Thank God for your work!
Besides the Christmas meeting we had “stag -parties” and “hen-parties” this month. Girls were learning cooking. They could show their worth in “Culinary science”. We are glad that girls already have certain abilities, but we decided to enrich their knowledge sometimes. At the end we prayed for each of them could be a good wife and mom in future. Boys were discussing the topic: “
Success and prospe
rity in life”. Guys were talking about what you need to do to be successful and how to use it in practice. Many of the boys will graduate from the school this year so in our opinion they need to get a good and simple piece of advice. For example, how to use money correctly and how to have good relationships with people. We shared our personal experience and it was like a key to open the hearts of teenagers. As the biblical example we took the life of Joseph. The conclusion was the fact that Joseph was very successful because God was always with him.
In February we are planning to devote most of our meetings to such topics as: “The Bible is the word of God”, “What for am I studying the Bible”, “the Bible as a life guideline” and also to add watching films based in these topics. We ask you to pray for these meetings not to be useless!
We live in Belarus. In our country Christmas is celebrated twice a year. It’s a good time for our team, when we have more access to orphanages and even greater number of children and teachers, whom 
we can tell about Jesus Christ.
This month we had an opportunity to hold a Christmas program for children from Belinichy school – boarding. During December we came to these children and talked to them about Advent – the wait
time for Christmas. In January, the culmination of all was the Christmas campaign. When we arrived to this school-boarding, chi
ldren were already waiting for us. Everyone was exited who came with us and what was in that big boxes, which we brought. There were some people with us, who showed a puppet show. It was interesting to watch the kids for the way they learn, start asking questions about what will happen today, and then they began to talk about themselves.
The show had begun. All of the seats in the hall were occupied, all the children had come. Also there were present some educators and part of administrators of the boarding school. Christmas- is
a good opportunity to remind people, no matter of their age, about God’s love and about the sense of this celebration. With the help of these puppets children and adults could better the essence of Christmas and with the aim of the Savior’s parish into the world. Besides the main performance, there were conduct various games and there was a good opportunity to learn good Christian songs with the children. After the Christmas performance children were given good Christmas presence. But we hope tha
t the child
ren could get not only the gifts of candy and hygiene items, but they also were able to experience what a great gift of God has done for us by sending His Son into the world.
Besides the festive program on Christmas, we also had meetings at which we told the children about the importance of communication with God. We said that God does not always answer our prayers the way we would like Him to answer us. Because He knew better what we need, then we are. As usual, there was a variety in our way of communication with the children. There were different songs, games and individual communication. Here are our news for this month!
At the moment, in orphanage of Smilovici, the number of children has reduced by 5 children. Some childr
en were taken back to their families. Now we have to pray and hope that children 
will never leave their moms and dads again. We have to pray for children to keep in mind their knowledge about Jesus and tell their parents about Him.
This month we were telling children who Jesus is, about His purpose of coming in this world. We also told them about the way to get to Heaven. Except Bible Studies, we were holding a lot of interesting games. Some of the games were held for all ages, for other games children had to be distributed into small age-groups. At the moment, we have more children of 3-6 years old than other ages. Chil
dren have learned some new songs and revised the songs that they already know. At one of the handicraft lessons children made bracelets usin
g many-colored beads. Each color had each own sense in it. By the end of the lesson, children had many-colored bracelets and learned another bible story. It was a pity that we didn’t have enough time. We feel that older children lack of personal communication. Somebody is happy about conversations with their parents on the phone and they want to talk about this. Somebody is upset. So next month, if it is God’s will we are planning to spend more time with children, talking to them in private. Especially it’s very important for older guys.
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 