Do we really see the children entrusted to us? Do we truly hear them? We spend our days with children and teenagers, and they surprise us again and again — with their questions, their answers, and how much they remember. We’d love to share three moments that have especially encouraged us lately.
“I Am a Special Girl”
“I am a special girl,” a teenage girl told us as we travelled together. She had friends, she explained, but she didn’t much enjoy their company. She would rather be alone and think about the Lord.
Her friends pushed her constantly — to go where she didn’t want to go, to stay out late, even to steal from a shop. She refused every time. They mocked her and pinned a storybook nickname on her. But something she said stayed with us: she longed to tell her friends about the Lord, yet felt she needed to know her Bible better first.
So we invited her to our teenage camp. When she arrived, we found she was carrying something heavier — a health condition that left her weak and drained, her body rejecting food after every meal. For two days she could barely take part. On the third day, her strength returned enough to join in.
That evening, around the campfire, she asked us to pray. Her life was in God’s hands, she said, and she wanted to serve Him. At home, she reads the Bible to her younger brothers and sisters. Among 45 other teenagers, she laughed, made friends, and set her struggles aside for a while.
“But That Isn’t the Verse We Learned Last Time!”
At one of our children’s clubs, the moment arrived to teach the children a Bible verse. Suddenly a young girl spoke up — she remembered a verse from an earlier session and wanted to say it. She stood, recited Ephesians 2:9 without a single mistake, then asked to take the paper home to keep in her Bible.
It was a small moment carrying a big reminder. Children hold on to far more than we realise. We think they aren’t listening. Then, later, they surprise us.
“I Haven’t Forgotten You”
Children come and go from our clubs, and sometimes we lose them completely. One little girl had loved to curl up in our arms and listen during lessons. Then hard times struck her family, and all the children moved into foster care. We didn’t see her again for four years.
Then, at a club in another place, a familiar face appeared. She had grown so much we barely knew her. “I haven’t forgotten you,” she said. Now settled with a foster family, she can once again sit with us, listen, and hear the truths of Scripture. What she heard years earlier had never left her. It had stayed in her heart.
What These Children Teach Us
We rarely know how long the gap will be before we meet a child again, or what will happen in between. But we know this: God sees every child. He knows every heart. And no word of His truth planted there is ever wasted.
Please pray for these children — for health, strength, and growing faith — and that what they’ve learned will one day anchor their lives. Perhaps, many years from now, we’ll hear it once more: “I haven’t forgotten you.”
-Testimony from a worker in CEF of Serbia (Neven)
(Image:Adobe Express)
