April 2023 Svetlana

With all the humanitarian work that is going on it is important not to forget that we need to help the younger generation. We are thankful to God for the churches that are still standing and that we are able to have meetings with children and teenagers. The following is a report from our co-worker Svetlana:

We are thankful that despite the war in our country we are still able to continue doing mission work although we had to make some changes. We are very busy providing humanitarian assistance, which is very important, but at the same time we are looking at what other projects and ministries we can resume doing in these circumstances. 

Last summer we started holding teenage girls’ meetings at our church. I saw the need for this because at that time there were no teen or youth meetings being held in the church. I realized that I was not ready to run a meeting for both teenage boys and girls on my own. So because I was more in touch with the girls we decided to start there. It turned out that they already had a lot of questions they wanted answers to. Over the past six months, I have become much closer to this group of girls and in our meetings we are able to discuss many topics that are relevant to them.

Teenage girls group meeting in village church

Then in the fall of 2022 our church started to have a group for the youth. A younger believer named Julia took on this ministry. She does not have much experience but she has a great desire to do something for the youth. Julia is one of our former campers and is from a family that UCCF supported in the past. It is a blessing to see how much she has grown in the Lord and that she now has a desire to serve. 

Young people's meeting in local church

Here are a few comments from Julia:  "We enjoy spending time together studying God’s Word.  The main goal of the group is for our teenagers to build a relationship with God. We try to help them with this through discussions, games, and studies of the Bible. At the start only 4 young people came, but now there are 8-12 coming consistently. They are so interested in everything that is going on in the group that it makes the occasional challenges that arise seem unimportant.”

This March we also had a special meeting for the younger girls who attend Sunday school. They were really looking forward to this meeting. We talked about how each of them is special and uniquely created by God. Afterwards we made handmade soap, drank tea, and talked.