The love of a church family, new opportunities to attend camp, sharing in fellowship with believers, and to hear the Gospel preached, are the avenues that helped change Arina’s life in the story below. Most people cannot even begin to understand what the life of an orphan is like. It is one thing to lose your parents to a tragic accident or maybe an illness, but to be sent to an orphanage after a difficult life with negligent parents can be even more overwhelming for a young child.

Thankfully, God has exhorted us in His Word to care for orphans and widows. Praise God for the many men and women who continually show God’s mercy and love through their own lives by offering up their homes, their time and faithfully sharing of their Father in heaven. Young eyes are opened in a new way when they see the difference between the family of God and the family into which they were born. “After plunging headlong into loving Christian fellowship, hearing the Gospel preached at the meetings, singing praise songs, and communicating with her mentor, she came to believe in Jesus and started praying.” Please continue praying for the SGA-supported Orphans Reborn ministry; both for the ministry teams and the children they love upon.

Greetings dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus!

On behalf of the Orphans Reborn ministry team in the city of Blagoveshchensk, I would like to thank you for your prayers and support in reaching children who for various reasons have been left without parental care. September marked the sixth year of our ministry, when we united in a small team and started regular meetings with orphaned children. 

Over the years, many events have taken place—some dramatic and some very hopeful. Today I want to share the story of an ordinary girl named Arina, who happened to be an orphan with a living parent. We met her on our very first visit to the orphanage. She was 10 years old back then. Arina was open to communicate and listened with delight to the story of Jesus. As we found out later, the girl had never known her biological father. Her mother lived with another man with whom she had a daughter and a son.

After a time, her stepfather had left, and the mother plunged into drunkenness and fornication, not being home for weeks at a time. During such terrible times, Arina, only 10, took upon herself the full burden of looking after her siblings. In summer, it was not too difficult, but with the onset of the cold season there were many troubles. Her younger sister was already in the first grade and Arina dressed her the best she could. On early mornings, in the freezing cold, Arina would take her sister to school. The lead teacher sensed something amiss and very soon the hostel room where the family lived was raided by people from the children services and the police. The children were taken away, and their mother was deprived of parental rights by a court. The stepfather took the little ones to his home, and Arina stayed in the orphanage. A few months after we met, the girl went to live with a foster family, but three years later they rejected her, and she returned to the orphanage.

Already grown up and disillusioned with people, the girl did not want to communicate with us very much at first, at times not coming to our classes. We prayed for her and kept offering the hand of friendship. Over time, seeing how the rest of the children looked forward to our visits, Arina slowly began to soften. In the first open conversations, she told us that she no longer believed in God and did not understand what love was. She already had a record with the police for harassing her peers, and at the orphanage she repeatedly broke discipline and even organized two group runaways. The boys were always hanging around her, and she seemed to want attention, taking greedy gulps of her worthless life to spite everyone.

We tried to bear with her nasty behavior by preaching the Gospel not only in words, but also by our kindness toward her. Eventually we earned the privilege of being heard. Arina gladly began to talk about different things, attended classes and creative workshops, and stopped saying that she did not believe in God. A smile began to appear on her face more and more often. She asked questions about Jesus and had a positive impact on other girls. Reflecting on the forgiveness of sins and God’s mercy, Arina made a decision to forgive her mom and restore the relationship with her. One day after school, though not authorized by the supervisors, she went to visit her mother, and they chatted for hours. We were very happy about the major shift in her heart, but as is often the case in the struggle for the souls of orphans, unexpected circumstances came up which made it more difficult for us to continue ministering to Arina. The administration of the orphanage, not believing that the little ‘infringer’ could change so quickly, took the opportunity to transfer Arina to another orphanage more than 80 miles away from Blagoveshchensk. It was in the summer, so we had not seen her for over a month. We had no communication with Arina, so we decided to check on her, while making a celebration for the other children.

After the event, I had a serious conversation with her. In September she was going to start ninth grade, which meant that she would be transferred to an orphanage even further away from Blagoveshchensk. I explained to her that life in that orphanage would be very different from her life in the previous place, especially the one she would be going to soon. I knew that we would not be able to visit her, and since she had not been strong in her faith yet, very soon the lifestyle she recently abandoned would return, making her even angrier and more unhappy than she had been. 

The only solution I saw was for a believing family from our church to take Arina on vacations and holidays. Arina agreed and already in August she came to a Christian camp held by our team. After plunging headlong into loving Christian fellowship, hearing the Gospel preached at the meetings, singing praise songs, and communicating with her mentor, she came to believe in Jesus and started praying.

Here she made good friends and saw an alternative to life. After the camp, Arina’s life changed significantly; she stopped being afraid of the future and began to trust in God Who loves her. Throughout ninth grade, despite the wicked pressure in the orphanage, she sought Christian fellowship, spending all her vacations and holidays visiting with a Christian family from our church. My wife Anastasia joined in the mentoring process, as Arina and her Christian friends were visiting us. On one of these evenings the girl confusedly said to me, “Artyom, I have a spiritual issue—I cannot grasp the Triune nature of God…” I replied that the truth of the Trinity of God cannot be understood but is accepted by faith. The girl brightened up and smiled happily. Arina began attending the church and youth fellowships. In January, at the Christmas youth conference, she again heard God’s call to a dedicated life. 

When thinking about it, she realized that she wanted to help people and for this purpose she decided to enter medical college and become a nurse. Arina pushed her studies hard, which was difficult to do in the orphanage, and after passing the exams, she achieved her goal. 

Now, in the person of Arina, our team is added by a graduate of the orphanage, a student and a future nurse all in one. And this summer she went to her favorite Christian summer camp again, where she once experienced an encounter with her Savior Jesus Christ. May God bless you and keep you!