Dear Friends and Family,
The days are quickly turning shorter as I begin my five-month leave of absence from my community in Moldova. It is with a strange mix of deep joy and sorrow that I transition into this next phase of life. I am sad to leave my life behind in Moldova: the sweet children who greet us each day at the boarding school, my dear community that supports me so well, my apartment that I’ve worked so hard to turn into a place of warmth and refuge, the sights and smells of the market, the transportation and the people of the country I’ve come to call home. But it is also with deep joy and gratitude that I enter into this period of learning about my new calling to be a husband and about my newly-acquired vocation of loving Rachel well. By the time you read this letter, we will have less than one month until the day of our wedding!
The past month in Moldova has been full of many exciting happenings. One of them is that the director of the boarding school where we have been volunteering has decided to give us full use of two of the rooms in one of the children’s dorms and of one classroom in the school! Up until now, we had been leading activities with the kids outside or in a borrowed room somewhere on the school property. But after many long talks with the director, he finally agreed to give us what we had been hoping for! This space will allow us to significantly develop our activity with the children. We will continue leading an after-school program for them every day that includes social skills, music, arts & crafts, moral and spiritual education, nature discovery and games, but we will now be able to expand this program to include homework tutoring, therapy, sex education and vocational orientation. Please pray for continued wisdom and direction as we seek to develop these different areas of activity.
A drawing created by a 9th grade boy at the boarding school that was published in the newspaper.
Another area into which we have expanded is the publication of this school’s first newspaper! Our advocacy team worked incredibly hard last month interviewing, gathering, writing and designing to produce a ten-page newspaper called Ecoul Copilăriei (Childhood’s Echo) that exists to make the voices of these children heard! Through stories, interviews, artwork and poems, this newspaper shouts of the dignity and humanity of each child living at this boarding school. Our hope is that the newspaper will be published once every two months and that it will eventually be run and written completely by children. This is one of the main functions we have in mind for the classroom that we have been given at the boarding school.
We are continuing to make progress as we seek to register our local organization in Moldova. The most recent news is that we have chosen a name! We will be called La Via, which in English means “To the Vineyard.” It was inspired by several passages in the Bible, including John 15, in which Jesus says that he is the vine and his followers are the branches, signifying a relationship of dependency and intimacy. It was also inspired by passages that talk about the feast in the Kingdom of God, a place of celebration, communion and intimacy between God and humanity, a place to which we are traveling together with the children we love. Another significance of the name La Via is that “Via” is an acronym for the Romanian words “vindecare, integritate, acţiune,” which mean “healing, wholeness, action.” We want to be a community of people who actively pursue healing and wholeness in our own lives as well as in the lives of the children and their families.
So, we are one step closer to registering La Via as a local NGO in Moldova. While we will still share the same philosophy of ministry and vision as Word Made Flesh USA, we will be an autonomous organization that is able to hire local staff in Moldova (while those of us from the US will remain as employees of WMF working as volunteers at La Via). Please continue to pray for this process as we will be able to hire more local staff and significantly expand our work once we are officially registered.
In closing, I would like to share about a little girl, whom I will call Laura, from the boarding school in
Moldova. She is in second grade and just recently began attending and living at this particular school. Her hair is mossy brown and curly, her eyes are big and round and her head always hangs down, like there is something she is hiding. We have been drawn to her sweet, gentle presence at our activities every day even though she rarely speaks or even looks up with those big, brown eyes. We have heard rumors about her family and about where she has come from, but those things are less important than the prophetic words Laura speaks to us with her presence each day. One evening, I was having dinner with Adriana’s (Moldovan staff member) family, and she said to me that she sees the sufferings of Jesus in Laura each day. It is as if the presence of Jesus is right there–hurting, broken, bleeding in our midst.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Laura that night and still cannot as I transition into this five-month leave. The presence of Jesus among these children is what I seek and is what I will continue to seek during this leave. Laura’s downcast eyes and silent mouth will continue to speak to me as I am gone.
The cry of the teenage girls who cut themselves and want nothing more than a family will be heard in my head. The longing of the boys to know significance and belonging after years of abuse will not fade from my heart.
Thank you for your care for these children we love and for making it possible for us to be present to them. Please pray for Adriana, Magda, Rachel and Annie as they continue to serve Jesus among these kids in Moldova each day. Pray for healing, wholeness and the communion that we can know in its fullness at the feast in the Kingdom of God.
With love,
John Koon