| | Last week was one of the hardest and best weeks of my life. I was both physically spent and spiritually refreshed. We had the opportunity and privilege to care for and love on the children from the town of Reghin who live at Apalina orphan. Apalina is an old castle estate. As soon as you drive through the gates, you see two statues, an overgrown fountain that has not worked in years and a circle drive that leads to an abandoned castle. If you use our imagination, you can see that this used to be a beautiful place, but to be honest it takes some looking to see all of this and I saw it for the first time this past week. The reason it is hard to see is because it is all so run down and the children standing at the gate and roaming the grounds somehow obscure all of it. Your attention is drawn to the children. I remember years ago when my family ministered at the local orphanage that we called Big Blue - because it was a big blue building with big blue doors and a big blue roof. The children who lived at Big Blue were older elementary and middle school aged. The conditions, even after communism, were less than ideal. Once these children reached a certain age they were sent to live in Apalina. I remember many of them crying to me that they were afraid to go to Apalina and would run away and live on the streets rather then live at Apalina. Apalina can honestly say that it houses the least of the least of these. I was thinking this morning of the Spencer Tracey movie, Boys Town and how Spencer Tracey’s character saying that he never met a boy that he did not like. What a wonderful sentiment. To think and act this way, you have to go into working with the least of these knowing that they have horrific stories and that the reason they act the way they do is not because they don’t like you but because they have HAD to live this way to survive. Some of the “hard to live children” were… three brothers who were taken into the system because their father beat them senseless and made them live with the animals. When they came into the system they were feral, wild-eyed children. Another boy had a toe that had been chewed off by a rat and had his entire back burned in some way. These are just four of the 50 children we had in our care this past week. We knew going into the week that this week would be our hardest week, BUT the LORD showed up in so many ways. I had the opportunity to talk to them four times for about 15 minutes each night and each time you could have heard a pin drop, on the hard dirt floor, as I shared how Jesus loved them and wanted them no matter what they had been through and many of them wanted to follow Jesus. Please pray for the children from Apalina that the seeds that were planted and watered would bear much fruit for the kingdom and that these sweet beautiful children would grow to break the chains of abandonment by living godly lives and raising godly children. In contrast to the children, we had a team from the West Palm Beach area – a rather affluent area of America. These high school students and adults ministered along side of us and loved hard! Many of the students were challenged to think about the resources that the LORD has made them stewards over – to think biblically that it is not their money, car, clothing, etc, but that they are stewards over much. One young man was sitting in the field, on the last night, crying and wondering why he has so much and these children have so little. As he was wondering out loud, he mentioned on little girl who did not speak and I challenged him to ask the Holy Spirit what he should do. He said that he did not know but I felt (and so did others) that we should pray over her and ask the LORD to heal her. We got up off of the field, gathered everyone together and prayed over her. The LORD did not heal her voice but the next day she wanted to lead us in our prayer before breakfast. I looked at her leader with a look that maybe the LORD was going to heal her voice as she prayed, but he chose not to, BUT maybe her healing was in a different unseen way. She bowed her head, sputtered sounds as her leader whispered in her ear and crossed herself. It was so powerful! One boy who came to camp with his girlfriend just seemed to go against all of the rules we had at camp – don’t go into girl’s tents, only smoke at the smoke-hole, stay with your group, respect each other, etc. On Thursday, the last full day at camp before we left on Friday to go to the water park, I had to talk to him about threatening his girlfriend. I told him that real men do not beat their girlfriends or those who are younger and that I thought he was a good young man – speaking faith blessing that I hoped would bear fruit. By this time, I had started seeing glimpses of a good young man immerging in an environment of love and care but was battling a lifetime of hurt and abuse. Another event had me moving towards him to talk about his threatening to beat up a boy unless he gave him 10 lei (about $5) so he could buy cigarettes and as I was walking towards him, I saw him run down another younger boy and begin to kick him like a dog. I dropped what I was carrying and put a linebacker tackle on him that landed him on his back. Needless to say, he was sent home thinking that he would be hurt and mad – never wanting to see me again, but this was not the case. On Saturday, we go back to the orphanage for one final visit after camp and guess who was waiting for me? The boy we sent home. My first thought was that he would be mad and ready to fight (I had been praying against this), but he was open and loving. This blew all of us away! The LORD was working. One last thing about Apalina before I close- we all left the week hurting and wondering what kind of future these children have. The LORD brought one boy to mind this past Saturday (the day we went to visit the children) – his name is Gaspar (Gash-par). He was one of the boys from Big Blue who went to live at Apalina. The LORD brought Gaspar to mind because Lee Ann and I were walking in the center and guess who we ran into? Gaspar. I told him that I had been thinking of him and we talked about what he was doing, how handsome he was and how proud of him we were. He is working and making it! The LORD sent Gaspar to remind me that He is in control and that He is watching over His children and for me to rest in what I am called to do and leave the harvest to the LORD of the harvest. |
