Usually, when asked to draw something they like, a child might sketch a sun, a flower, a car, or a dog. However, Eric Mock of Slavic Gospel Association says the drawings they receive from Ukrainian kids tell a different story:

Girl in Despair (photo courtesy of Meruyert Gonullu via Pexels)

“All of their pictures involve pictures of missiles or bombs coming down and them hiding from them. Their idea of of daily life is a threat of an air raid siren and what it means to them.”

SGA also asked a few children about their prayers. “They said they pray for the war to end. They don’t ask for peace because they don’t know really what peace looks like,” Mock explained.

Many Ukrainian children are also growing up without a father. Some fathers have been killed, taken hostage, or are serving in the army.

“And so these children, the fabric of their communications with one another, the fabric of their walk through society, is dealing with the constant state of war. This causes anxiety and fear,” Mock says.

That’s why Slavic Gospel Association is running its Heat and Hope and Operation Winter Warmth efforts — practical, cold-weather relief projects aimed at easing the daily burden on families torn apart by war, especially single mothers and widows who are now carrying the full weight of providing for their children while struggling to make ends meet.

A Boy Behind The Glass (photo courtesy of Tanya Gorelova via Pexels)

The war has left deep trauma in children’s lives, but hope is not lost!

“The best medicine for these kids is the love of Jesus Christ and the warmth of a local fellowship of believers,” Mock said.

Hope exists alongside heartbreak. More than seven hundred children have been killed by Russian aggression, thousands more wounded, and around twenty thousand kidnapped to Russia.

Pray that many more children will find the help and healing they need in Christ. And pray for lasting, sustainable peace in Ukraine.

Header photo: Child Looking Through the Window (photo courtesy of Elina Fairytale via Pexels).

Learning together on Puzzle

Puzzle is a team-based learning program from SAT-7 ACADEMY that airs on both SAT-7 KIDS and SAT-7 ARABIC channels. Julianna Sfeir, the SAT-7 ACADEMY Brand Manager, explains the program.

(Image courtesy of SAT-7 USA)

“Puzzle is a gameshow where we convey learning in a fun way; so we teach children their rights through games and the best way to do it is through professionals. So we reach out to professionals who do this. We use a positive psychology coach and the children will play and they will learn through their hands-on games. So they will play together, some mental games and some of it are physical games and they will challenge each other.”

Each episode has two teams of 25 kids from all different backgrounds. They must learn to work together despite their differing backgrounds. Some children are very poor and some are very rich. Some of the participants are boys and some are girls. They come from different religious backgrounds and from a variety of countries, including Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon.

Common rights, respect for diversity

Sfeir says it is like a social experiment. Instead of focusing on things that divide them, these kids are asked to play together. They learn about the rights they all have in common despite their different backgrounds. They are shown respect and the love of God as they work together to understand how to think critically and healthfully about their situations and cultures.

As the program goes on, kids learn they have a right to be safe and educated. They have a right to be healthy and have a childhood. They also learn that these freedoms come with responsibility. Diversity, communities and the environment should be respected.

After their team games, each child has the opportunity to debrief the lesson in the “confession room”. In that area they are free to think through what they have learned.

“It’s okay to say how you feel. It’s okay to talk about differences and it’s okay to look at the other, not as the different other, the enemy, but it’s okay to discover that you can be friends,” Sfeir says. “You can be friends outside politics, outside war, outside everything that is happening that keeps us from becoming friends.”

Reaching kids and parents

Messages about rights and working together have resonated not only with kids, but also with parents. Sfeir says parents are seeing that raising kids to be aware of their rights and the rights of others in their communities is a good thing. It might be different than how they were raised, but it is a way to create a generation who advocates for what is right for a whole community.

(Image courtesy of SAT-7)

On the last few days of filming for the first season, the kids did not want to leave. Sfeir says kids were crying and asking to stay and see other episodes filmed.

“This tells us a lot about these kids who probably had a touch of heaven, they tasted something,” Sfeir says. “They felt love and acceptance and they felt that they belonged and this is what they need! And these kids were not easy to be dealt with, I tell you, but eventually they were crying because they had to leave. Honestly it was a huge challenge for us.”

The first season’s 26 episodes have finished filming, but Sfeir thinks the results are lasting. The kids all went back to their homes and communities, but seeds for hope were planted. God’s truth about reconciliation and belonging was presented and these kids got to taste a small piece of it for a while.

“The time is ripe, the people are ripe.”

Sfeir says it is clear people are beginning to see truth. She asks people to pray for the Holy Spirit to grow the seeds planted during filming so that kids and their families might know God’s truth.

Please pray that SAT-7 Academy would be able to continue to advocate for children while making the Gospel accessible in new places.

If you would like to support the ministries of SAT-7, click here.

Image courtesy of SAT-7 USA.

Food for the Hungry reports:

There is a longing inside each one of us to go home. Whether it is a child away at camp or visiting grandma, or an adult on vacation or away on business, or a young soldier off to serve at a distant post, our hearts long to return to home.

While we all feel that tug on our heart strings, most people who read this have a reasonable hope of returning home, either at the end of the day, the end of the trip, or the end of the assignment.

(Photo courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

Worldwide, more than 3 million people are homeless at some time during any given year. The UN High Commission for Refugees reported in June 2014 that the number of people worldwide who will not get to go home at night has exceeded 50 million for the first time since World War II. Over 51.2 million people are refugees, people seeking asylum, or internally displaced persons (IDP).

The conflict in Syria alone has created a situation where 9 million people have little hope of going home in the foreseeable future. In just five years, Syria has gone from being the country hosting the second-largest number of refugees to producing the second-largest number of them. Imagine, if you will, millions of children crying in their mothers’ arms at night, “Mommy, when can we go home?” But all those mothers can do is tenderly hold their children and ask the same question silently in their own hearts.

Counting refugees only, Syria and Afghanistan have produced 5 million combined, with Iraq adding another 400,000. Keep in mind that the UN report was published prior to the rise of ISIS in Iraq. By now, the refugee count is well over 6 million. So, where have they gone?

They have crossed borders into the neighboring Middle East countries, with hundreds of thousands escaping to camps in Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Yemen, Egypt, and other countries that are, themselves, ill-equipped to shelter, feed, and provide the basis necessities of life for so many.

Like the 6.5 million IDPs, the 6 million refugees have escaped one desperate situation only to find themselves in another. We want to believe that people who have become refugees are safe. They are not. They may have escaped the scourge of the fighting, but now they face the test of surviving, often living in tents or other makeshift structures and having no source of providing for themselves. They must place themselves at the mercy of the countries that have taken them in, while millions of children cry, “Mommy, when can we go home?” And still, there is no answer.

There is a huge gap between what the host countries can do for the burgeoning numbers of refugees and what those refugees need to survive. That’s why Food for the Hungry (FH) and many other NGOs and faith-based organizations exist. We can fill that void by reaching out in a Christ-like manner, showing compassion, and providing essentials the rest of the world takes for granted. By providing assistance like education for refugee children, we can give them a sense of structure in their lives and prevent the long-term crisis of another generation of uneducated adults. Perhaps, by doing what we do, we can help some of these refugee children feel enough sense of security to feel at home with their parents at night, instead of crying in their arms, asking, “Mommy, when can we go home?”

Through their local NGO, FH is actively providing ongoing relief to refugee families in Syria and Lebanon. Would you consider praying for these families and for FH, and helping them to provide for their needs? Read Press Release. Advocate. Give.

Sukant grew up in a Muslim family.
Through a Children’s Bible Club, he came to know
the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior!
(Photo by Mission India)

India (MNN) — In some places, children do not even know what it means to be a child.

Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India is working against that with Children’s Bible Clubs in India during the months of April and May.

Lindsay Ackerman of Mission India says, “A lot of India’s kids don’t have an opportunity for what we might consider a traditional childhood. Millions of kids work at home; they might be very responsible for household chores and caring for younger siblings, especially if their parents are working all day in the fields.”

If kids in rural areas do get to go to school,they will only attend a couple of years before they are needed back at home to take care of animals and other chores. Oftentimes, the jobs ascribed them are dangerous.

“Childhood in India is not always the most joyful existence,” Ackerman says. “One of the things our Children’s Bible Clubs bring to these communities is an opportunity for the kids to just have some fun together. They come every day for ten days: they get to play games, they do skits, they sing songs.”

The children get to experience an environment where adults care for them as children, and where they can play with others. More importantly, the children get to hear the Gospel.

“For many of these kids, this is the first time they’ve ever heard about Jesus,” Ackerman explains. But the Gospel doesn’t stop when it reaches the ears of the young ones. “These kids are hearing the Good News, and often their parents will tag along.”

The parents are often curious about what their children are learning. At the end of each program, the children do a performance with skits and songs to present the Gospel to their family.

The children bring home God’s Word in their hearts, and their club leaders reinforce what the children tell their family. Often the leaders will visit homes in the evening to develop relationships and encourage the parents.

Ackerman explains, “Those relationships that develop continue on long after the club ends because our volunteer leaders are part of the local church or part of a church in a nearby community that’s been working to share the Gospel.” These relationships become discipleship opportunities.

The Gospel is important not only to give hope to children leading adult lives: it is a source of truth amid multiple other religions. “What most people don’t think of is the fact that India actually is one of the most Muslim populated nations of our world. There are actually over 170 million Muslims in India. So this represents a unique opportunity to reach the people of the Muslim faith.”

One example of this is Sukant, a boy born into a Muslim family. His dad was out of the picture, and at a young age Sukant took to playing in the streets. He took up the habits of swearing and stealing, behavior that disturbed his mother. But she wasn’t sure what to do.

The door opened for him to attend one of Mission India’s Bible clubs in his neighborhood. Hesitant at first, Sukant soon got used to the kindness of the adults there and began to play with the other kids.

When he heard about Jesus, his behavior changed drastically, drawing the attention of his family. Sukant and his aunt accepted Christ as their Savior, and Sukant has a strong desire for the rest of his family to know Christ as well.

Right now, every dollar you contribute to Children’s Bible Clubs will be matched. For $5 you could make it possible for 10 more children to hear about the love of God. For $5 you have the potential to open the eyes of 10 families that are caught in the deceit of false religions.

Ackerman says, “We would just really ask for prayer for the Bible Club leaders as they enter the lives of these children, and that they would be encouraged as they pray for them and get to know the parents.” She also asks that you pray that the parents and their children will have open hearts ready to receive Jesus.