One of the most important things we can do as a family is to prepare and to eat a meal together. It’s an essential ingredient in binding us together and an excellent teaching and training ground for all kinds of basics about family life.
Learning to make pizza
The children we serve at many orphanages in Ukraine have a safe place to live, food to eat, clothing and educational opportunities, as well as Bible teaching. But, we still need to teach them what it means to be “family”; that includes the coming together to prepare food and to eat a meal, and other basic life skills.
Learning to make crafts is fun and inclusive
We have seen wonderful results in time spent with the children in preparing dinners including making pizza and also baking potatoes with grated cheese and other foods. Some of the children were not at all interested when we started and yet,
Making cheesy baked potatoes
they really got into the spirit of it and enjoyed themselves tremendously, including serving others and helping the younger ones.
They also enjoyed the creativity of fixing their own meals and, of course, eating what they had made! We are also working with the children on craft projects that teach them creativity, starting and finishing a task, and the fun of creating something all their own.
While these simple things seem very basic to us, they are not the norm for children living in an orphanage. If our hope and expectations are for them to grow to be functioning adults and to have families of their own, they need to learn what it is that families do and the correct way to interact with each other. Thank you for helping to create healthy families!
