Corrections

Children’s summer recreation organized by Tatarstan churches was placed in a picturesque area on the bank of the Kama (river).

God blessed with a warm weather, children got tanned as if they had been in the south, bathed 2 times a day and ate well.

Thank God for the wonderful cook – sister Tansylu!

The children did not just have an idle recreation but they got spiritual food as well.

This year the program of the children camp was called “Good Samaritan”.

They tried to practise charity every day.

What does charity mean?

It means to be prepared out of compassion to take care for those who need it.

It is merciful, benevolent, attentive, careful, loving treatment of another human being.

Every morning the children were doing morning exercises cheerfully instructed by trainers.

At biblical hours the children were getting to know with “assistance” of the prophet Jonas the merciful character of God and His attitude to all people.

God released His great compassion by sending His Son Jesus Christ into the world.

The Holy Spirit was sent for every sinner that repents which also shows God’s mercy toward us.

The biblical hero called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian, “helped” children to understand that everyone needs the Savior and those who accept Him get born again.

We learned the aim the first man had been created for.

King Josiah, prophet Jeremiah and Tabitha helped us to understand it.

We also analyzed the parable of wheat and tares and learned that there is true and false mercy.

A prayer for a sinner is the very beginning of mercy.

The parable of Good Samaritan showed how one can release mercy in everyday life.

The rich man and Lazarus “told” us about the reward that everyone who does mercy is to receive.

We were organizing all-group games in a day theme.

Each game contained a spiritual sense.

I will tell about one of them.

It is called “Plane Crush”.

At the morning line the children got to know that there had been a plane crush.

They organized groups to look for the people from that plane, also they needed to find a flight recorder, load and documents.

The game’s object is to find all affected people and provide assistance to them, and also to find a flight recorder, load and documents.

At the evening service, there was staged a little play illustrating the events that had taken place in the plane and the reason it had changed its course.

The children learned that the captain had decided to earn a little money, change plane’s course and sell the load.

The spiritual sense of the game – God leads us a course to Heaven but sometimes we run off the course, we get attracted by something else, we start thinking too much of ourselves and then comes a crush in our lives if we do not fulfill God’s plan and follow His course.

There were played a lot of sport games and relay-races.

All of us remembered a funny game called “Pioneerball” (similar to volleyball) with balloons filled with water.

It gave so much laughter and fun.

Little children with a tutor were holding a cover trying to throw with it a balloon with water over the net in such a way that the opposite team would fail to catch it into their cover and the balloon would fall to the ground and burst.

This game teaches team work and unity.

What a surprise it was when a balloon burst with its splashes touching not a team but a referee!

The referee stood all wet with cheerful teams being dry.

The children in their spare time were learning how to make articles out of paper (origami), application over transparent colour film, they knew soap carving.

It is necessary that our children could make something useful and beautiful with their own hands.