| First Reflections of Falesti, Moldova (pictures coming soon.)
Perhaps I would do better to write earlier in the day before jet-lag gets the better of me - I've put off writing love enough. This trip to Moldova was life-changing. I got back in Nashville Friday night and I'm am still just trying to understand all that I saw and heard. Moldova is a beautiful, beautiful country! Riding along, looking at it's rolling hills of trees, sunflower fields, villages and cities it was hard to believe that so much pain eats at the heart of her people.
My team focused our attention on a five day camp for children from the Falesti Internat at their state-run summer camp location. The location is adorable but sparse. The children live in cabins with three to four to a room with no running water or electricity. The workers are pretty much volunteer workers with little to offer and the children are very thin and small for their ages. The the games, clothes, and sport equipment that we brought in seemed so small, but these children were so appreciative and loving it was like we had given them more than they could ask for. In fact, I had a hard time keeping my girls from returning most of the craft pieces in the form of gifts like necklaces and bracelets. They were all unfailingly generous.
Although I loved all the children, I became very close to Ana, who was in my small group Bible study, and her friend Ina. They are both 13, but Ana has just turned 13 so Ina is a grade ahead. They have both been abandoned by their families. Ana has the double pain that her little brother was adopted this year, leaving her that much more lonely for family. Over the five days Ina did a particularly good job of breaking through the language barrier, memorizing English phrases, patiently helping me with my Romanian, and knowing when it was time to give up and get a translator. She is so intelligent it made me all the more determined to make sure she would have a chance and a future. They are both beautiful, abandoned girls and therefore very high risk for being trafficked into slavery. Fortunately, because of the transitional housing that JMI (a NGO my church is in the process of establishing) has recently opened, I know that these girls have a hope to look forward to.
By the end of the week I was surprised to discover that another child had almost silently entered my heart as well as the girls. Nicolae is one of the many boys that I taught during life skills. These boys all surprised me with the compliant respect that they gave me even though I was teaching them things like the importance of flossing and making healthy relationships right after they got off the futball field. Nico was quiet like most of the middle school aged boys, but kept coming back to ask to use my camera. He is a photo-journalist, bringing back expos on the beautifully clean, bare kitchens and gripping portraits of his friends. I never got to sit down with him and a translator until the last day when I found out that he was the last of a large poor family so his parents decided to give him up. Too many mouths to feed. I gave him my University of Tennessee hat, but I wanted to give him the world.
As we all said goodbye, after many hugs, songs and prayers, the girls tearfully ran off to Ina's cabin. Nico just stood there staring at me through the window; his hand matching my hand against the glass. Then as the van began to move he ran to the open window at the front of the bus and yelled, "Amy, Amy!" and passed his name tag through to pass to me. I was so full of love and yet felt so helpless. As we drove off I turned to the small young woman who sat next to me and I hoped these kids would have a similar future. We were taking her from Falesti to the transitional housing in Chisinau so she, at 15, now has a hope of college and a life not controlled by fear. For $140 a month, people interested in standing in the gap for children like my kids can give to JMI to help establish the web of protection they so desperately need. I'll give you more information if you are interested.
There are more stories, but there's too much to say here.
http://rhccfalesti.wordpress.com/
Next stop is the Candidacy Conference starting July 28. |
