Agape news

 First Agape Camp of 2014!

The Agape Ministry Team in Rovno held our first children's camp of the year. We conducted the camp at the orphanage in the village of Bolshiye Mezhirechi. We have been ministering in this orphanage and providing friendship, moral support and spiritual encouragement for these kids for three years now. God gave us a wonderful time together with these very special orphan children who are in such need of encouragement and support, friendship, love... and a knowledge of the true and living God.

We had a great camp program this year. The children were divided into five groups - three younger groups and two older groups. The counselors and campers started their mornings together with exercises and a worship time. Then they went to Bible lessons where they studied the Word of God, learned new truths from the Bible and came to know their Heavenly Father more and more closely. Next came crafts class, music, and sports time. In the afternoons, there was a daily 'Camp Game' involving all of the groups, followed by the evening service. The children heard the Word of God again during the evening service, as well as being able to take part in the service themselves, singing Christian kid's songs and putting on Christian-themed skits. The camp was kept running smoothly by our two coordinators and sisters in Christ, Inna Shostak and Olga Golysh.

The evening time around the campfire was a very special event for the older groups. We really enjoyed spending time together with them every night. We sang songs together and our brothers in Christ and team members, Miroslav and Bogdan shared their testimonies of how they came to the Lord. One evening, as we prayed together, we noticed that two of the girls, Anya and Yulia, were crying. We went over to find out if they were ok. As we talked, they shared that they wanted for their lives to change and wanted to accept Jesus into their hearts. For us, this was truly a miracle from God. You see, during the first few days, Yulia did everything she could to disrupt the Bible lessons, and her whole group didn't want to have  anything to do with the Bible lessons at all. We know that God is all-powerful and He can change hearts and circumstances - and Yulia's change of heart was a powerful testimony of this fact for our team and a real encouragement for us.

Also, on the last evening of camp, as we were having a time of fellowship with the older groups, we had another amazing testimony to God's power. Two of the older guys, Misha and Dima, came up to our Christian brothers and said they too wanted to pray to ask God's forgiveness, they wanted to repent before God.

Many of the campers shared how God worked in their hearts during their time with us. "When you listen to the guy up there preaching, telling you all about God, you just want to live for real... not just survive," said Anya,   a 10th grader.

Over the course of this camp, God reminded us all once again that He is all-powerful, and He can and will work miracles through us, his children, as we minister to Him by serving others. We just want to praise and thank God for giving us such a great start to the summer camp ministry season. This camp was a great encouragement for us as we saw the kids come to repentance, being able to become closer friends for them, and just seeing them come to understand that God truly is their Heavenly Father. As we left, none of us attempted to hide our tears of happiness.

Our God is good! He is good all the time!