Europe calling

On Wednesday I had a friend over for dinner. Marilyn just got back a few weeks ago from a year in Romania. We hadn't kept in touch that much while she was gone, so I was hearing about some of her experiences for the first time.

She told me about how she was inspired by Mother Teresa's example to go volunteer every week in an orphanage. She started out in one that wasn't so bad. The kids were in good shape, they watched TV together, they played. It was sad, but it wasn't horrible. Marilyn was moved to look for worse.

And she found it: in a hideous Bucharest orphanage for handicapped kids. She said the stench of humans lying in their own excrement on the floor was so awful that most Romanians wouldn't even go inside. The staff would sit around all day watching TV in a separate room and ignore the children. They wouldn't give them water because then they'd need their diapers changed. Some kids had not been outside in years. Some were slowly dying of intentional starvation, dehydration and of course emotional neglect.

The more she told me, the more my emotions welled up. Finally I just leaned over the kitchen sink where I was washing veggies and I wept. I wept for the kids, I wept for the culture of Romania with its hideous dehumanizing by Communism, I wept for all of Europe in its loss of rich humanizing identity in Christ. I wept because they need so badly to be restored, and I wept because I can't stand being here in the US when I could be THERE, loving them, one person at a time. It was the not being able to stand it that really pushed me over the edge, almost into the sink. There's so much to do, and I'm not even there yet.

The good thing about this whole wrenching thing is that it proved once again that my desire to be over there is not just selfish. It's a love that God put in my heart at least ten years ago, and I am waiting on Him to send me to do His will. Here I am, Lord; send me.

I know that it is coming, just around the corner.

And Marilyn: I am so, so proud of you, and privileged to know you.

Link to article on Romania's orphan problem: here. I was going to put up a photo, but as I spent an hour looking through Google images, I just couldn't do it. It's too heartbreaking, too frustrating, too overwhelming.

BUT, for some much more encouraging images: Here are some links to an amazing Dutch couple's work in Sibiu, Romania. They opened Casa Luminii as a day care center for handicapped kids, and it's going so well that the government now partially funds them and has them training institutional staff as well. I wish they could train more people...
http://www.houwies.evonet.ro/adobefoto/casaluminii/index.htm
http://www.ecmi.org/133403.ihtml