“November 10 is the World Day of Prayer for Orphans. If you care about the futures of orphans, you can make a difference! You may not only pray for orphans during the day, but also visit them in orphanages, run charity campaigns at you local church or organization. Besides that, during your church service you may devote sermons, songs, poems etc. to this issue.”
On October 12, 2013 we organized the conference in Minsk “Belarus without orphans”. This 
conference was dedicated to the people of three categories: support to the parents who adopted orphans, motivation for those who consider adoption, and training for those who work with orphans.
Conference attended parents wh
o adopted orphans as well as people and families who have the desire in their hearts to adopt or foster a teenaged or younger orphan. All in all there were 150 people at the conference!
We gave thanks to God for the reason that the conference did take place. We also thank everyone who prayed for the conference and upported it financially. On the way to reach 
the dream – Belarus without orphans – there always will be difficulties and resistance because orphans are the most spiritually unprotected category of children.
Our dream is the country without 
orphans. But sometimes the most unprepared audience are the parents! Many have the right motivation. Many have not just desire but even material abilities to adopt children. But the curse of our age is the lack of practical knowledge and experience of adoption. Because of this some adoptive parents among evangelical Christians return adopted orphans to the orphanages. We are fighting this phenomenon. At the conference we tried to
address many important problems: adopting a traumatized child, first months and first years of adoption, adopted children in teenage times – how to help a child to go thro
ugh the hard times of character development. The adopted children would not remain young for a long time but sometimes because of lack of knowledge comes disappointment and then returning of orphans back to the orphanage.
One of the seminars was for adoptive parents. At this seminar we talked about emotional burn out and how you can help yourself. Many adoptive parents who adopted more than one child slip out, become disappointed and give up. All because they have much work, everyday cares and on top of that problems in rising adopted children for which they were not prepared.
Many parents do not dare to adopt because of the fear of 
the genes. Others become so confused that they do not see any other solution except as to return adopted children to orphanage. We had families who 
openly talked about these issues. Disappointed people think that this is their problem but it is the Satan who seeds doubts in people’s hearts and they start to even waver in faith. What is going to happen to them if they would not find support? We already have 30 Christian families that returned children to orphanages. This is the Satan’s strategy – to disappoint people in themselves and then to beat them out to leave the churches through their feeling of guilt and total nullity.
I am thankful to God that He has showed us these needs and showed us the way of how we can support these pe
ople. Besides the encouragement the conference gave people the real psychological, juridical and practical help at the seminars. At the seminars people had the opportunity to speak about their everyday problems and 
to get help they needed.
At the conference attendants had the opportunity to hear Gods point of view on the situation with orphans through the teachings and witnessing.
People who serve to the orphans in the orphanages and shelters learned the practical skills for this ministry. They also had the opportunity to exchange resources and skills. This was also very helpful for those who try to organize t
his kind of ministry.
This is the third year when we held this conference. At the end of each conference we asked people to fill out the questionnaire – we wanted to give pe
ople the opportunity to give their feedback and suggestions. We can see that many people need juridical and psychological help. In response to this need we have opened a consultation center for adopting parents where people can come with their needs.
We believe that our common dream – Belarus without orphans – is real if we unite together as a society in our support for adopting parents and orphans.
When I go to the orphanage I feel joy and sadness at the same time. On the one side, it’s so 
great to see all the guys, but then you become sad because they are orphans. Very often you see how someone is trying to please you, but someone else steps aside. Children seem to be different, but they have the same pain. The main problem of orphans is loneliness. It’s always evident that they need a close
friend, but at the same time they are trying to hide this pain under nice smiles.
“Doesn’t God love us? Why didn’t my mom come to me and take me away? I was praying all the night asking Jesus her to come!” God gave an opportunity to answer children all their questions before this world could give a false answer. I want to share children’s experience I’ve observed during this month: “Sasha, will you come next week? Will we sing? Will we have gifts today? What will we play today?” These and all the unsaid questions that children a
sk prove that every child needs a close friend.
This month we touched upon
the following questions: “The evil and the good”, “Friendship”, “Ten commandments” and “A prayer”. Through these topics we tried children to rich the truth about God. We believe that God worked and will work in future. Because some children didn’t have and even still don’t have hope. Not every child with his or her own mind will realize nowadays how strong God loves. The reaction of every child on the heard can be absolutely different. I think that it’s natural. Our concern is to tell them about God and give them our love and care. I believe that some children have a result already, and in someone else we’ll see it later. Because God knows what He is doing!
Our lives made that way that we can’t go without socializing with one another. Of you course you can drag yourself thru life in your lonely pride, but it will be just existence. All people need unselfish rel
ationships, based on trust, the same sympathies, interests and passions. Friendship is always important topic to talk about, including age group of eleven thru seventeen years old. At this age friends can earn value when they stand up for each other in their changing and unprotected world. Teenagers are ready to give up anything to build a friendship, however it’s a big loss to them when it bre
aks. So now what, it’s better not have friends at all? Of course not! In order to have a good friendship you need to know r
ight foundations. That’s why we spent two gatherings of the month to talk about friendships. On those gatherings we talked that friendship builds up on support of each other and how can we be the person that others can trust. We tried to make kids think about characteristics of a good friend and what God thinks about friendships.
On third gathering
we talked about that we need to show love to surrounding people and that God showed His love to all people by sending His only Son o
n earth.
Fourth gathering was different from all the others. We had long-awaited “girls’ and boys’ talk”. This is probably most favorite meeting for kids in this orphanage. For boys we had organized meeting with professional photographers. In the beginning of this meeting kids were taught how to act in front of the camera. Another thing that kids were taught, that in order to get beautiful picture it’s not necessary to have open body or have improper body position during the photo-shoot. After the meeting each kid had a chance to take a picture. Boys and girls had it done separately so they all can feel comfortable while taking pictures. It seemed that all kids were satisfied! Soon we’re planning to print these pictures and give to each kid who attended the meeting.
We met many new children in the new academic year. And we became very good friends with them. 
Every time they waited for u
s with impatience, we had group hugs and incredible joy together. Every time we leave children didn’t want to let us go. Everyone wanted to talk to us for as long as they can, they wanted to tell us about themselves and theirs study, showed us crafts, pictures and were telling us what they have learned when we have been away.
This month we h
ad 3 trips to Smilovichi. First God’s creations – God created an Earth and how many day it was take to do these things. We didn’t tell them that God created a man, we just saved this fact for the next lesson to have much more time to explai
n them.
During the lesson, children molded from colored dough things that God created every day, and that was such a good opportunity for them to keep this craft and remember the lesson much better..
7 of October we had our second meeting. We talked about the most precious creation of God – man, God has given his heart to the man. We said that every child was created by God too, and God gave them names as like he gave names 
to Adam and Eve, that was good way to show them how good their na
mes are, and they should love it. Plus we created every child name using pasta and paper, plastered with clay.
For last meeting we invite a Christian children’s puppet show with the program of “Creation” to show children what we have told them.
After each meeting they become more and more closer to us. It’s sad to say goodbye to them. In my heart I worry more and more about their future, as it’s becoming more and more obvious how much the miss home.
Indeed God created the Family, not orphanages. Everyone needs family.
LOVE 4 THE CHILDREN 