On January 15, 2010, a group of four Word Made Flesh staff members (Rachel Simons, Magdalena Clopotel, Annie Keith and John Koon) set out from Galati, Romania to establish a new community in neighboring Moldova. There they were joined by Adriana Ciobanu, a friend of WMF for several years. This multicultural team of five did not come to Moldova with a particular program in mind. Instead, they sought to discover the presence of Jesus among socially vulnerable children in the capital city, Chisinau. Their desire was to see their vision flow naturally out of relationship with these children.
Knowing that over 8,800 children in Moldova live in institutions and that many of them have lost both of their parents, the team decided to find out how they could get to know these children. They visited and volunteered at several different organizations in the city and surrounding villages but were unable to find the place where they felt called to serve. After a week of intentional prayer in the spring of 2010, they got in touch with the president of an organization called Arca who, unbeknownst to the team, happened to be looking for volunteers to work in a boarding school for vulnerable children. A few days later, the team found themselves in the director’s office at the largest boarding school in the country.
With official permission to be present in the school through their relationship with Arca, WMF Moldova began working with a group of fourth graders, and later a group of first graders, each afternoon. They organized games, led art and music activities and assisted with homework. Through these relationships it became clear to the team that they had found the place where they would serve long-term.
During the summer, WMFM staff spent time several days a week with the same children at the state-run camp they call home for three months. This time together allowed the team to significantly deepen existing relationships as well as to create new ones. They also observed much more clearly the suffering and brokenness that is present in each of the lives of these children.
That fall, WMFM staff continued organizing games, art and music activities for the same children that they had met in the spring, often on the blacktop outside of the school. WMFM’s advocacy team began a project at this time as well, a school newspaper called Childhood’s Echo whose goal was to make the voices of the children heard in the local community. The newspaper eventually evolved to include more and more of the children’s writing, stories, poems and artwork.
After some time of observing the team’s efforts and care for the children, the school director decided to answer a previous request of the team for their own space by giving them an empty room in one of the dormitories for them to conduct their activities. This was a huge step forward in their relationship with the director and in their ability to be present to the children. Now the team could begin organizing an after-school program which, in the beginning, consisted of nature discovery, moral/spiritual education, social skills, art, music and games.
The program quickly outgrew the one room, so in November, WMFM was given the keys for two rooms in a different dormitory, which meant that they not only had more space, but this space was their own to use as they liked. The team had been wanting to add homework assistance to their after-school program for some time, and this was the perfect opportunity. Together with the school director and classroom teachers, they created a list of children who were the most behind in school and who could benefit the most from additional tutoring. And so they began spending an hour a day with these children working on basic skills in math, reading, writing and science with the hope of catching them up to their grade level.
One of the directions in which WMFM had desired to move from the beginning was in promoting the concept of community service in Moldova. Through relationships at local churches and schools, volunteers began coming to serve at the after-school program, which by early spring 2011 had expanded into a total of four rooms and about thirty children. Some of these volunteers became involved on an almost daily basis and expressed their desire to learn about coming on staff.
Groups from a private high school came periodically with the intention of spending time with the children, something that allowed a mingling of kids from very different backgrounds who would not have otherwise interacted. These groups also made generous donations of clothing, toys and food, the first support that came from within Moldova, an encouraging and hopeful direction for the future. Other visitors to WMFM in the spring of 2011 included the field’s first Servant Team as well as three different interns, all of whom brought much to the community during their respective stays.
Also during the early months of 2011, WMFM began the process of registering a local organization called La VIA, (to the Vineyard). The name signifies movement toward a place of communion, fecundity and celebration, ideas reflected in Jesus’ words in John 15. In mid-April 2011, the organization was officially registered, giving WMFM the ability to legally obtain work space as well as to begin hiring local staff members.
WMFM is looking forward to the directions in which it might move in the future: expanding the after-school program with children, looking more deeply at the educational needs of the children, getting to know the children’s families, or developing a counseling and social work program for both the children and their families. But regardless of the directions in which they go, WMFM staff seek to daily affirm the dignity and beauty of each of the children they now call their dear friends.