This is a picture that will always have a special place in my heart. It's a long story but I'll do my best stay on track...
In this photo, left to right, is Sergey (camper), Sergey the translator (who will be called Seroja for the rest of this post), Kolya and me. The two boys are from Vasilkov orphanage and came with the toughest groups of boys I've dealt with at the Hope Center. Directly disobedient and constantly disrespectful... even the young boys would laugh at you and run off if you asked them to follow the scheduled events. They actually booed pictures of people they didn't like at the final slideshow - a universally (so I thought) loved event.
For these reasons and others, I am nearly always asked to adopt the oldest boys at most camps and these were some tough boys. Sergey and Kolya weren't much different for the first week they were here. That was when Seroja started taking an interest in getting them to follow the rules.
Initially it started with some butting of heads, raised voices and threats of being sent home but gradually there was a softening. A few days before the end of camp Seroja and Kolya took a long walk around camp and talked about life and what I had been sharing (through Seroja's translation) with the boys. He encouraged Kolya with what he knew of the Bible and advocated for accepting Christ. Here's the weird thing...
Seroja wasn't a Christian. He'd heard the gospel message ad nauseam at camp over the years but never really made a serious commitment.
After this talk and some deep soul searching on Kolya's part, the boy accepted the Lord with open arms. It was a beautiful thing to hear him talk about the strength and peace he felt for having made the decision. Seroja was so moved by this that he accompanied this group of orphans to the train station. As he was saying goodbye to Kolya, this young Christian encouraged Seroja to also make a decision; "You're ready, I can see it in your eyes," he told him.
It was at this point that younger Sergey came and asked Seroja and one of our interns to pray with him to accept Christ as well.
If you're following this, my boy Seroja has now played a major role in leading 2 people to Christ - prior to having accepted Him himself!
As you can imagine, this made for an amazing 24 hour period, but it gets better. Last night I was honored to pray that same prayer with Seroja as he finally let down his barriers and accepted the Lord himself.
He spoke on the phone with Kolya this evening and the young orphan told him, "I'm praying for you and Matt and you need to pray for Matt too."
What do I say? Shocked, humbled, broken, rejoicing, weeping... all at once.
Can't wait to see what the next camp has for us.
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