Christmas Continues through January!

When the Christmas “shoe box” gift packages come to Serbia, there are literally thousands that need to be distributed all across northern Serbia. With schools closed for 2 weeks for winter holidays,  that means the distribution usually stretches out through a good part of January. This year the best was saved for last, when the children from the poor Roma community near to the Roma kindergarten where we volunteer received their long-awaited Christmas packages.

Several hundred children along with their parents were invited in two shifts. Our friends who operate the free kindergarten for Roma children that is built from 16 stacked shipping containers went from door to door throughout the Roma community for several days passing out claim tickets to each child. Only those with tickets would be allowed to enter. Each session those invited waited patiently outside the gate until the appointed time arrived and the gates were opened, and then they all filed in and took their seats in anxious anticipation of our program.

We were invited to present several meaningful songs that we have been teaching to the children who attend the kindergarten, as well as a sketch that deomonstrated how material possessions are unimportant when compared to sharing love with each other.

Once the program was finished, and the presentation ceremony was completed, those in atendance calmly passed out of the meeting room to receive their gift packages. We can only imagine the joy on the children’s faces when they reached home and tore open their gift boxes. Many thanks go to those children in western Europe (U.K., Switzerland, Germany) who put the packages together along with their parents, and then sent them on to a needy child in Serbia.

To view the following photos on Healing Hearts Balkans Facebook page, click here.

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