Hey y'all, I'm back from my mission trip to Romania. Our group flew out on July 17 and flew home on July 26. We flew to Munich, Germany then to Budapest, Hungary and then traveled by van to Aradia, Romania. When we arrived in Budapest, we were greeted by our translators who informed us that the temperature was only 110 degrees outside! The hottest day was 118! :shock: Our hotel had no air conditioning -- cold showers are a real blessing! We spent some of our days visiting children at the Village of Hope orphanage. Here are some of the orphaned kids we met. In the first picture, the Romanian girl sitting on the far left (green shirt) is Gizzy. She was in a state orphanage until she was 5 years old. She had never known human contact, other than being fed and having her diapers changed, until she was taken out of that orphanage so she suffered from disattachment syndrome when she arrived at the Village of Hope. She is 13 years old now and a beautiful, wonderful girl. Also in the first picture notice the young woman sitting on the arm of the couch (can't for the life of me remember her name.) She is a Gypsy who is mentally retarded and blind. She had been raped and was pregnant when the founder of this orphanage found out about her. So, she and her little girl, Denisa, both live at the orphanage. Denisa is about 3 years old and adorable. She is the little girl who is scrunched up beside her mother in the first picture. In the third picture you'll see Vali (girl) and Cozmene (boy). They are brother and sister Gypsy teens who were rescued from abusive parents when they were younger. The whole family lived in the trash dump, like this. Vali has scars all the way down her back from where her father burned her by laying her on top of a hot grate. Both had been sexually abused as well. :-( The last picture is one of the little Gypsy girls. Her name is Aurora. Isn't she adorable? The orphanage gets $20 per child per month from the Romanian government to raise these children. The need is MUCH more than that! If anyone wants to sponsor a child it is only $30/month to do so. They need the money, but they also want the kids to have "families" who will write them, send birthday and Christmas cards, etc. Just anything to show the kids that they are valuable and that, even though they don't have traditional families, people love them. Here is the main website for Hope for the World. http://www.hftwministries.org/index.html I can't find a website for the orphanage, but the missionary in charge of it is Marvin Lane, so if any of these children have touched your heart and you want to sponsor, contact Hope for the World and ask how to sponsor Marvin Lane's kids. You could also contact FL missionaries Roy & Rella Chestnut. They spend the entire summer living at the orphanage. Wonderful people! Here is their website http://www.roychestnut.com/ One evening we traveled several hours to visit the kids at Camp Joy, which is run by NY missionaries Tony & Kelly Collicco and their 4 kids. This is a summer camp that reaches out to Gypsy children (Gypsies are shunned in Romania :-(). Here are some pics from the camp and the Collicco's website. http://web.mac.com/HOPEFORROMANIA/iWeb/Romania/Welcome.html It is only $35 to sponsor a kid for a week of camp! I'll post more on this later. I have a lot of laundry and housework to catch up on, so I'm going to limit my time on here, but I'm going to post just some of the pics from the Gypsy villages that we went to minister and spread the Gospel to. If this isn't humbling, nothing is.
ready2cmyKing: enjoyed seeing and reading your post. I'm glad you were faithful in the call to the mission field. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. I'm told that you may only go once on a mission trip, but you'll never go just twice. Kent
May God continue to bless you Ready - you are an inspiration to us all. My neighbors are from Romania - they won the lottery to move here and are some of the greatest neighbors i have every had.
Praise God,I'm achanged woman THANK You so much for listing this information .I know we all have struggles in life but nothing like this .Wow those people were really haveing it tough.We really are so blessed ! Thank You , CAROLINA BEACH GIRL
It is very humbling to visit orphanages, isn't it??? All my kids are from orphanages. It hurts to some times think how they used to live. We take advantage of so much here it is unreal. Seeing it first hand really puts things in perspective. Drives me nuts as we were there this past Nov. to adopt our two children. Found out one still has sibs there and they may suffer his fate as well if they stay...a Russian mental institution. What some of you may not know that is common practice in a lot of these countries is to stick "disabled or special needs" kids in a mental institution to die. They literally go there at age 4 to lay in a bed all day. Most die w/in two years. No stimulation, no play, no love. My heart aches thinking of his sibs and trying to find a way to get back over there to bring them home. Hate the costs of these adoptions but once you go to an orphanage, you can not leave and NOT want to go back. You too have seen first hand what these places are like. Romania has since shut down international adoptions, which is ashame. There are so many children in eastern europe suffering and most of us here are clueless about it. I work for www.untilallhavehomes.org . It is a great organization to help place special needs children. If any of you can ever do missionary work or get the chance to visit an orphanage, take the chance. It will honestly change your life forever. Thanks for going over there. It really does make a difference in these childrens' lives. They remember the visits for years to come. Thanks for sharing the pictures. Great kids! Thanks for doing the work. Take care, stephanie.
When the precious little girl, Aurora, (pictured above) was just an infant she was placed in a hospital attic and left to die. She was an abandoned baby that had a bad infection, so the nurses at the children's hospital just put her in the attic to die. A missionary who worked at the hospital kept hearing the nurses speaking of "the baby in the attic" and asked what they were talking about. After she heard about Aurora, she started sneaking into the attic, feeding her, and taking medicine to treat her infection (a bad staph infection.) Little by little she got better and the nurses finally moved her back downstairs. As you can see now, she is a beautiful, healthy little girl. Family of the missionary who saved Aurora wanted to adopt her. They had her room all ready for her and were going through the "red tape" when Romania closed international adoptions. (Here is the saddest part of Aurora's story) -- Aurora is a Gypsy child and Romanians don't adopt Gypsies. :cry: You can still adopt from Romania IF you become a Romanian citizen and live in the country for at least 6 months. That is a tall order for most people to do. We need to pray that the country will lift the adoption ban! This mission trip literally fell into my lap. Someone from my church was going and sustained an injury and since I already had a passport, I offered to go. I had no idea what I was in for but I'm going to tell you what, I have never been so blessed in my entire life. It was long, extremely hot days of hard work, but I would go back over there in a heartbeat if I could. I have come home a new woman! The scales have fallen from my eyes as to what is going on in other parts of the world. We, the church in this extremely blessed country, need to WAKE UP!! We need to start sacrificing some of our "stuff" and start sending more money over to countries like these so the missionaries can continue to help needy people. We need to go on mission trips so we can come home with a new appreciation of all that we have been blessed with. I have never, ever seen poverty like what I witnessed first hand with the Romanian Gypsies. And those people do not have any kind of welfare program that is going to help them. WE, the hands and feet of Christ, are their hope. Wake up church, this is our commission!!!!!
Very cool, R2CMK. A friend of mine is leaving for Africa on a mission trip this next week. Please pray for him, if you would.
