From Julia and Sergey

During the month of January we delivered the Christmas gifts to the two orphanages outside of Odessa (both of them are located in the villages about 2.5 hours of drive). The gifts were collected by many churches in the States and shipped to us along with nice Christmas wrapping paper. We had a lot of fun wrapping each gifts (we had a lot of pizza too!!) those "gift wrapping parties" were at our place, so in the pics, you can see some of our place and all of us who One of the pastors of our church drove us to the first orpahange which is for the kids with special needs. Sergey shared about Christmas there, we made a craft together and had a great time. You can see the happy faces of the kids in the pictures. The trip to the second orphanage was even more fun. We grouped together with a small church from the nearby town close to the village where the orphanage is located. They made a puppet theatre show and the pastor from that church prayed for the kids and blessed them in the end of our time with them (the staff of the orpahange gave him an eager permission to do that).

We are thankful for every person who participated in this Christmas project: donated and shipped the gifts, wrapped them, drove us to the orphanages, played with the kids and shared the love of Jesus while we were there. That time was very rewarding for us and next Christmas we want to visit more orphanages and bring some joy to more kids. This year we had gifts for about 235 kids. It is amazing to see how the Body of Christ united in one effort can do so much and can do even more!!!