As I walked to the school, I met him and a few other teachers who began thanking me for caring about the children of our village. I wondered and asked what the reason was for such an unexpected expression of gratitude? The teachers told me this story:

Sergey's Christmas Story

Yesterday, we visited families at risk in our village, and particularly the children in these families. In one of the houses, we found a woman totally drunk and almost insane of alcohol intoxication. Neighbours told us she had been in such a condition for over four days. We inspected the house and saw there wasn‘t anything to eat. There was this boy standing there, very shy, the son of this drunk lady. His name was Sergey. We asked him, what did you eat all these days? Embarrassed, the boy pulled a Christmas present out from under the bed he had received at church and quietly said he had eaten the cookies and candy from the package. There wasn’t anything else to eat in the house. We couldn’t hold back our tears...

Planting hope in children's hearts

Now I understood why the teachers wanted to express their deepest gratitude to the Church and Hope Center for caring for children from broken families - like Sergey. In fact, the Christmas package had saved the boy from suffering starvation.
Praise God! The Christmas packages are not only sharing joy with poor families, but sometimes, they literally save children's lives by planting hope in children's hearts when everything around is dark and hopeless.

Shared by Sergey Kadyrkulov, Pastor and Leader of the Hope Center in Uzun-Agach, Kazakhstan

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