Singling them out

I remember hearing the story of Zacchaeus as a kid.  Jesus was in the middle of a crowd and Zacchaeus was trying to just see him.  So, Jesus turns around and calls Zacchaeus by name and says, “I’m gonna spend today with you.”  There is more to the story, but I always remember thinking how cool it would be if Jesus singled me out of a crowd. 

This is Zhenya, and he’s been my buddy ever since I singled him out one day.

We work with an orphanage with 100 kids. We always try and reach out to the individual, but its not always easy.  For instance, one of the questions we’ve wrestled with is: What can you give 100 kids for Christmas that will make all of them feel special?
Yeah, we have a tough time coming up with good answers too. But we think we came up with a really good answer this past Christmas.
Over Fall Break we put on a camp for the kids who stayed at the orphanage.  Before our afternoon gathering we would show pictures of the kids that we had taken throughout the day.  And the kids would sit and watch them for almost an hour.  Vlad, would tap my shoulder and say, “Hey, that’s me!”  every time he was on the screen. 
That gave us a great idea: why don’t we give the kids pictures of themselves for Christmas?  A church in the States sent over a bunch of photo albums and Janna and I started collecting pictures. 

Sasha, Zhenya and Lina with their photo albums

It was a lot of work.  We printed over 1500 photos.  A lot of kids got between 15-25 pictures of just themselves, them with friends and them with members of our team.  We sorted pictures, kept track of who had how many pictures and every week we tried to take pictures of the kids who didn’t have that many photos. 
The older kids didn’t really cooperate. 

Sasha and Vita looking through Vita’s album.  Vita loves taking pictures. 

We think it makes a difference what we give. We seen lots of groups coming in and giving all the kids the same gifts.  We’ve done it ourselves.  During the holiday season, some group goes up every week, does a Christmas program and hands out gifts. 
And frankly, we’ve seen that causes a problem.  If everyone gets a cheap little present, the same cheap little present, its not special.  And the kids don’t see what they are given as special, and so they don’t try to take care of it.  The kids don’t know how to own stuff, to take care of their things. 
So, our goal is to give less stuff to the kids, but have it mean more.
We gave them photo albums and nice notebooks for Christmas.  We gave them a Christmas card that was personally addressed and signed by someone in our group.  And we put their name on everything they got, including the gift bag.
I got to watch as the first graders flipped through their albums. Taras showed me every picture and said, “That’s me!” I tried to explain to him that that was the goal, but he was still enamored with pictures of himself. It was super cute. Every member of our team had similar stories.

It was cool, for one of the first times ever, when we gave out the presents, they intentionally sought members of our group out to say, “Thank you.”   Usually, we can’t get them to say “Please” or “Thank you”  for anything.

We gave Nastia her birthday present last week.

And we are doing something for every kid’s birthday.  So far they love it.  One day I was handing out a birthday present and Karina made me repeat her birthday 8 times so that I wouldn’t forget it (Her birthday was over 9 months away).  We are backing off of giving presents that aren’t personal and unique.  And the kids are already responding, they really want that special present.
We are trying to single them out.  Cause we think that’s what Jesus would do.