Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you so much for your prayers for our team and the prayers for the children. If you remember, the kids that we worked with during the school year in the boarding school/orphanage either go home or go to a summer camp for the entire summer. The boarding school/orphanage that we work with sends it’s kids to a camp about 40 minutes outside Chisinau.
Throughout the summer, different groups, usually church groups from the US, will visit a week at a time and facilitate activities. After the kids have breakfast and spend an hour cleaning up their cabin and the camp, the groups arrive with a program and some type of craft or organized game. After lunch and a 2 hour rest time through the heat of the day, the teams usually come back for a few hours before dinner. If the weather is nice, the kids can swim in the morning or afternoon. After dinner, the staff either show a film or blare music from the gazebo for a all-camp dance party.
While many kids stay only at camp for part of the summer, some kids stay at the camp for the entire summer. These kids that have no one to visit. No one who wants them to come home for a least a week or a month. For all the beauty of the countryside, and the distractions offered by people coming with oriental trading crafts and jump ropes, their life at the camp is still hemmed in by a somberness born of needing to be grown up while they are still children. The camp is not warm and inviting, it’s not a home. They have lots of visitors, but those people come for a week at a time and leave again. I feel the emptiness for the kids who are there.
We walk into the gates of the camp each day with bunches of thread for friendship bracelets and a volleyball. Not only to offer a distraction from the boredom, but as a way to build trust and relationship with these kids. They need to know that the presence of Jesus exists in the midst of their personal horror. That He can provide healing for deep wounds. I am hoping, praying that it is while spending time together that we can build honest and open relationships that enables Jesus to tend to these wounds…those of the children as well as our own.
Seriously. I can’t thank you enough for the prayers and support.
Joys:
- The children. It is a gift to be able to get to know them.
- God has given us the strength to make it through these last few weeks. Our schedule became kind of crazy and exhausting, but we got to meet a lot of great kids.
Concerns:
- In July and August our team is spread out. John, Rachel, and I attend a conference for WMF in Nebraska. Please pray for Magda and Adriana as they work in our absence, and that they would get some quality rest.
- We will be meeting in August to access what we’ve learned from the summer as a team and to plan for the fall and spring.
Much love and thanks!
Annie