Alexander’s journey from despair to hope began two years ago at Russian Ministries’ evangelistic summer camp in Moldova. The week before he arrived at camp, 15-year-old Alexander had contemplated suicide. He had stood by helplessly when his older brother, a drug addict, leaped to his death from the roof of a multi-story building. Alexander blamed himself for his brother’s death, and lived with a heavy burden of guilt and shame.

At home, his alcoholic father did nothing to ease Alexander’s guilt, and his mother visited fortune-tellers who declared the family cursed, and predicted that Alexander would also take his own life.

Alexander was ready to end his life, but God intervened when some Christian young people from a local evangelical church invited Alexander to summer camp.

At camp, Alexander discovered God’s love and grace. Now filled with joy, instead of despair, Alexander returned home, became involved in the church—and every day brought more changes in his life.

Last summer, Alexander returned to camp with 11 of his friends, where they heard about Jesus for the first time. Stas, one of Alexander’s friends trusted Jesus and is following Him. The two boys are pictured at right.

A secure online gift to summer camps will help more teenagers like Alexander and his friend discover God’s love.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Camp, Youth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.